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BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX 


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ftcttfftneirtf  Popular  IBitlisUmt  %etM 

VOLUMES  NOW  RBAD7 

St.  PauI's  Conception  of  Christianity 
By  ProL  A.  B.  Brxtce,  DJ). 

The  Place  of  Clirist  in  Modem  Theology 
By  Prof.  A.  M.  Fairbaisn,  MA.,  D.D. 

The  Beginnings  of  Christianity 

By  Ptof.  Geobge  P.  FnBEBy  D.D. 

Life  and  Letters  of  Enamus 

By  Prof.  J.  A.  Froude 

Th^  Unity  of  the  Book  of  Genesis 

By  Prof.  WzLUAM  H.  Gueen,  DJ).,  LLJ). 

The  l^lfe  of  Martin  Luther 
By  Jttliub  KosiLm 

Wliat  Is  the  Bible? 

By  Prof.  Gbosos  T.  Laixd,  D.D. 

The  Problem  of  the  Old  Testament 

By  Prof.  Jambs  Out,  D.D. 

The  Theory  of  Preaching 

By  Prof.  Austin  Pbeim,  D.D. 

The  Evidence  of  Christian  Experience 

By  Prof.  Louis  F.  Sibaxms,  D J>. 

The  Pnuline  Theology 

.  By  Prol.  George  B.  Stevens,  PhD.,  D.D. 

Bernard  of  Clairvaux 

By  Rev.  R.  S.  Stores,  D.D.,  LL.D.,  L.H.D. 

Friendship  the  Master  Passion 

By  Rev.  H.  Clay  Trukbull,  DJ>. 

The  Conflict  of  Christianity  and  Heathenism 

By  Dr.  Gerhard  UazaoRN 

In  Scripture  Lands 

By  Edward  L.  Wilson 


PrUeWcmitsMekiieU  Pntage  10  emtJs  pm  e»fy  addUhmil, 


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BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVADX 


THE  TIMES,  THE  MAN,  AND  HIS  WORK 


AN 


i^tlitotnal  ^tuHp  in  €iifyt  Hectitreit 


BT 

BIOHARD  S.  STORKS 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1912 


/ 


THE  NEW  YORK 

PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

ASTOR,  LENOX  AND 
TILDEN  FOUNDATIOM8 


Copyright^  1999^ 
Br  Chablm  Scbuiibb's  Sohs. 


•      • 


» •  • 

■  • 


TO 

(Elie  €ivxti  of  tit  9ilfri««, 

Bbookltv,  Nbw  Tore: 

Trakied  6y  GmTs  grace,  in  ttt  oim  Aappy  work,  till  Usjrudom  ha$ 

b§oom$  the  helper  of  faith,  ite  dtvoubuBu  the  teacher  of  eaiholle 

eympathy^  the  beautg  ofkoUneu  ite  oommatuiing  ideal, 

the  victory  of  Chriet  He  supreme  expectation, 
^Umg  wenriee  tn  whUh  hoe  been  rich  m  reward,^-' 

wnrnur  or  its  ubbart,  akd  skstchuio  a  ufb 
or  anrouLAB  lustbb, 


^i 


''^SF 


AUTHOB'S  NOTE. 


Thb  following  Lectures  were  prepared  at  the  invita- 
tion  of  the  honored  Profe&Bors  in  the  Theological  Semi- 
nary at  Princeton,  New  Jersey,  to  be  deliyered  on  what 
is  there  known  as  the  L.  P.  Stone  Foundation.  They 
were  subsequently  delivered  before  the  Lowell  Institute 
in  Boston ;  and  three  of  them,  the  third,  fourth,  and 
seventh,  have  since  been  read  at  the  Johns  Hopkins 
University,  in  Baltimore. 

The  course  was  at  first  designed  to  embrace  only  six 
Lectures ;  and  the  writer  has  sometimes  regretted  that 
the  primary  plan  had  not  been  adhered  to,  —  two,  of  the 
briefer  course,  being  devoted  perhaps  to  each  of  three 
of  the  greater  Church  Fathers,  as  to  Chrysostom  and 
Augustine,  representing,  respectively,  the  Eastern  and 
the  Western  Church  of  the  earlier  period,  with  Ber- 
nard, representing  the  medieval  period.  Having  beg^, 
however,  with  Bernard,  on  account  of  more  recent 
familiarity  with  his  writings  and  his  work,  the  lecturer 
soon  discovered  that  the  entire  series  would  be  needed 
to  set  forth  the  great  Abbot  in  any  tolerable  complete- 
ness; and  other    possible  subjects  were    accordingly 


viii  authob's  note. 

postponed,  for  a  leisure  which  is  now  quite  certain  not 
to  come. 

It  farther  became  evident,  as  the  effort  to  exhibit 
Bernard  was  pursued,  that  in  order  to  anj  sufficient 
delineation  of  the  man  and  his  career,  it  was  indispen- 
sable to  have  his  Unxes  more  plainlj  in  view  than  it 
could  be  assumed  that  thej  had  been  or  were  before 
some  of  those  who  might  hear  or  afterward  read  the 
Lectures.  Simply  to  present  this  remarkable  leader  of 
thought  and  action,  belonging  to  a  distant  century,  in 
an  obscure  passage  of  history  between  indefinite  dark 
spaces,  would  be  neither  just  to  him  nor  useful  to  those 
whose  thoughts  might  for  a  time  be  occupied  with  him. 
It  seemed  necessary,  at  least,  to  recur  to  that  command- 
ing work  of  Hildebrand  which  wrou^t  memorable 
change  in  European  society ;  and  the  work  of  Hilde- 
brand could  not  be  understood  except  in  connection 
with  the  disastrous  preceding  decadence  in  Church  and 
State,  as  well  as  with  their  subsequent  comprehensive 
progress.  So  the  first  two  Lectures  came  to  be  written, 
after  the  others  were  well  advanced,  as  introductory  to 
those  which  were  to  follow.  The  series  thus  took  the 
larger  compass  which  it  retains,  aiming  not  only  to 
outline  the  personal  figure  of  Bernard,  but  to  trace 
rapidly  the  genesis  of  the  forces  which  in  his  time  were 
governing  in  Europe,  from  which  he  commonly  took 
incentive  and  aid,  which  he  had  sometimes  persis- 
tently to  withstand,  but  which  shaped  always  the  envi- 
ronment of  his  life.  Any  apparent  disproportion 
between  the  parts  preliminary  and  those  which  succeed 
may  be  measurably  relieved  by  this  explanation. 


authob's  notb.  <  ix 

It  was  the  purpose  of  the  writer,  after  deliyermg  the 
Lectures,  to  supply  at  once  such  references  and  notes 
as  should  seem  needful,  and  then  to  commit  them  to  the 
press.  But  he  became  immediately  occupied  in  pre- 
paring another  longer  series,  previously  promised  to 
anoliier  institution,  on  a  widely  different  theme,  and 
the  manuscripts  already  in  hand  had  therefore  to  be 
laid  aside  tQl  time  might  come  for  what  it  was  fore- 
seen would  be  the  considerable  labor  of  selecting  and 
arranging  suitable  sustaining  or  illustrative  notes. 
The  multitude  of  cares  constantiy  engaging  the  atten- 
tion of  .a  pastor  in  active  service,  with  unexpected  and 
exacting  public  duties  afterward  presented,  still  further 
delayed  the  fulfilment  of  tiie  plan.  Having,  however, 
accepted  an  invitation  to  deliver  the  series  before  the 
Lowell  Institute,  the  lecturer  gladly  avaUed  himself  of 
the  chance  to  revise  in  a  measure  what  he  had  written, 
and  to  point  out  or  transcribe  some  of  the  passages  in 
flie  writings  of  Bernard  or  his  contemporaries,  as  well 
as  of  previous  or  subsequent  authors,  which  had  been 
before  his  mind  in  his  earlier  work ;  and  so  it  comes  to 
pass  that  after  an  interval  greater  than  was  expected 
the  Lectures  and  Notes  appear  in  this  volume. 

The  Lectures  are  to  be  taken,  of  course,  for  what 
they  were  designed  to  be,  associated  general  sketches 
al  Bernard,  in  different  relations,  events,  and  activi- 
ties of  his  life ;  not  as  aiming  to  supply  a  continuous  or 
complete  biogr^>hical  or  historical  account  of  the  man 
and  hiB  career.  It  is  hoped,  however,  that  the  points  of 
diief  importance  in  his  spirit,  genius,  and  labors,  as 
well  as  in  the  times  which  he  powerfully  affected, 


X  author's  nots. 

be  found  su^ested  in  them.  The  Notes  are  more  nu- 
merous, and  sometimes  more  extended,  than  thej  would 
have  been  except  for  the  hope  that  some  may  be  at- 
tracted to  the  volume  to  whom  the  authors  quoted  maj 
not  be  accessible,  who  will  still  be  glad  to  have  before 
them  elucidation  or  confirmation  of  statements  appearing 
in  the  text. 

The  extracts  from  the  letters,  sermons,  and  other 
writings  of  Bernard,  and  from  the  monastic  accounts 
of  his  life,  are  uniformly  taken  from  his  ^^  Opera," 
edited  with  affectionate  care  by  Mabillon,  and  reprinted 
in  Paris,  in  a.  d.  1839.  The  six  quarto  parts  of  this 
collection  are  distributed,  it  will  be  remembered  by 
those  who  know  them,  into  two  comprehensive  ^^  vol* 
umes ; "  and  for  greater  convenience  in  consulting  these 
volumes  the  references  in  the  Lectures  are  always  made 
to  numbered  columns,  rather  than  to  pages^  In  the 
cases  of  other  authors  cited  the  editions  used  have 
been,  unless  by  inadvertence,  carefully  noted.  The  edi- 
tion of  Ab^lard's  ^^ Opera"  is  that  edited  by  Cousin, 
and  published  in  Paris,  a.  d.  1849 ;  with  the  ^^  Ouvrages 
In^dits"  of  A.  D.  1886. 

Not  very  much  appears  to  have  been  written  in  Eng- 
lish about  Bernard,  aside  from  brief  essays,  or  occa- 
sional notices  of  him  in  general  Church  histories. 
The  most  extended  and  particular  sketch  of  him  is  un- 
doubtedly that  given  by  James  Cotter  Morison  in  a 
volume  dedicated  to  Carlyle,  and  published  in  London 
twenty-five  years  since.  It  is  not  altogether  lucid  in 
arrangement,  or  satisfactory  in  particular  discussions, 
and  is  sometimes  less  sympathetic  than  could  be  desired 


author's  note.  xi 

in  spiritual  tone ;  but  it  is  prepared  with  coanoientioiis 
care,  is  written  in  a  clear  and  rigorous  style,  and  con^ 
tains  passages  of  much  beauty.  An  English  transla 
tion  of  the  works  of  Bernard  has  recentlj  begun  ta 
appear,  under  the  editorship  of  S.  J.  Eales,  D.  0.  L.| 
two  volumes  of  which  are  already  published. 

German  historical  or  bi(^;raphical  literature  does  not 
seem  to  have  concerned  itself  eztensivelj  with  the 
great  French  Doctor  and  Saint,  though  outlines  of  his 
opinions  and  his  labors  of  course  appear  in  the  larger 
historical  works  of  Neander,  Hagenbach,  Oieseler,  and 
others,  and  two  German  monographs  respecting  him 
are  well  known :  the  more  famous  one,  that  of  Neander, 
^Der  heilige  Bemhard  und  sein  Zeitalter;"  another, 
less  important,  by  Ellendorf,  ^^Der  heilige  Bemhard 
und  die  Hierarchic  seiner  Zeit."  The  early  French 
translation  of  the  Latin  sermons  has  also  been  recently 
edited  and  published  by  Wendelin  Foerster,  a.  d.  1886. 

Among  French  writers  on  Bernard,  the  one  most  fre- 
quently referred  to  by  the  lecturer  has  been  Theodore 
Batisbonne,  whose  ^^Histoire  de  Saint  Bernard  et  de 
son  Sidde"  (Paris  a.  d.  1875)  is  written  with  ardent 
admiration  for  the  illustrious  Abbot,  though  with  a 
certain  cultivated  intensity  of  expression,  as  well  as 
an  occasionally  disturbing  polemical  bias,  which  de- 
tract from  its  value.  The  article  on  Bernard  in  the 
^^  Biographic  Universelle"  is  an  excellent  brief  sumr 
mary  of  his  career ;  and  there  are  a  number  of  small 
volumes  treating  of  him,  like  the  ^^J^tudes  sur  Saint 
Bernard "  by  Abel  Desjardins,  or  one  in  the  series  by 
Capefigne   on   ^^Les  Fondateurs  des  Grand  Ordres." 


xii  author's  notb. 

Usuallj,  however,  these  contain  little  of  importance 
which  does  not  better  appear  in  Bernard's  own  works. 
This  is  equally  true  of  the  ^^Vie  de  Saint  Bernard" 
which  forms  the  first  volume  of  the  Bibliothdque  Cis- 
tercienne.  It  remains  an  occasion  of  imceasing  regret 
that  M.  de  Montalembert  did  not  complete  that  Life 
of  Bernard  for  which. he  had  made  vast  preparation, 
to  accomplish  which  he  was  fitted  bejond  all  others, 
and  to  which  the  entire  series  of  his  noble  volumes  on 
the  Monks  of  the  West^  had  been  designed  to  lead 
the  way.  His  failure  to  complete  his  magnificent 
plan  involved  a  real  loss  to  Christendom. 

The  writer  of  the  following  unpretending  Lectures, 
which  have  no  claim  to  attention  other  than  that 
derived  from  their  subject,  has  wished  to  avail  him- 
self of  the  labors  of  others  wherever  he  might,  but 
at  the  same  time  to  keep  his  mind  free  from  any 
determining  impression  by  them,  while  picturing  to 
himself  the  Abbot  and  his  work,  as  presented  in  his 
own  writings,  and  in  the  records  made  of  him  by 
those  who  were  nearest  to  him  in  spirit  and  in 
time.  He  fully  believes  that  any  fruitful  study  of 
Bernard  must  be  conducted  along  these  lines,  though 
excellent  suggestions  may  be  often  received  from  those 
whose  minds  had  been  previously  engaged  upon  the 
same  theme.  It  is  a  great  character,  in  a  great  career, 
which  is  here  imperfectly  presented.  It  can  hardly  fail 
to  show  itself  great,  from  whatever  point  it  may  be  con- 
sidered ;  and  stimulating  lessons  ought  surely  to  come 

1  "  Les  Moines  d'Occident,  depuis  Saint  Benott  jusqn'k  Saint  Bernard;/' 
Montalembert,  Charles  Forbes  de  Tryon,  Comte  de.    Paris,  1863-1867. 


▲uthob'8  notb.  xiii 

from  it  It  may  not  be  easy  for  one  living  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  wholly  to  nnderstand  one  living  in  the 
twelfth;  for  one  outeide  the  Roman  Catholic  Ohurch 
folly  to  interpret  one  trained  from  infancy  in  that 
ancient  Oonminnion.  It  cannot  be  easy  for  any  one  of 
ordinary  powers  and  labor  clearly  to  exhibit^  even  to 
himseli^  an  extraordinary  genius  for  incitement  and 
command,  shown  in  an  equally  extraordinary  work. 
But  it  is  often  ennobling  to  contemplate  that  which 
expands  our  thou^t  even  though  surpassing  it;  and 
the  writer  of  these  Lectures,  while  quite  aware  of  their 
many  deficiencies,  cannot  but  hope  that  others  may  be 
animated  by  them  to  studies  in  which  he  found  for 
himself  long  ago,  and  has  found  ever  since,  pleasure, 
instruction,  and  a  happy  inspiration. 

Before  closing  this  Note,  he  desires  particularly  and 
gratefully  to  acknowledge  his  indebtedness,  not  only  to 
the  Library  of  the  Long  Island  Historical  Society  in 
Brooklyn,  but  to  that  of  Columbia  College,  to  the  Bos- 
ton Public  Library,  and  to  the  library  of  the  Union 
Theological  Seminary  in  New  York,  for  occasional  use 
of  important  books  not  otherwise  within  his  reach. 
The  prompt  courtesy  with  which  every  request  for  aid 
of  this  kind  has  been  answered  by  those  in  charge  of 
these  libraries  has  laid  him  under  frequent  and  great 
obligation. 

The  shadow  of  grie^  as  well  as  the  glow  of  happy 
remembrance,  falls  on  this  volume  as  it  finally  leaves 
Hie  writer's  hands.  He  who  was  most  solicitous  to 
have  flie  Lectures  prepared,  who  welcomed  them  with 
an    abounding  sympathy,   whose   delightful  home  at 


nv  authob's  note. 

Princeton  will  be  always  associated  in  the  mind  of  the 
lecturer  with  his  repeated  visits  to  it  for  the  delivery 
of  the  course  now  committed  to  the  press,  has  in  the 
year  just  closing  passed  from  the  earth  to  grander  and 
lovelier  scenes  beyond.  An  accomplished  scholar,  an 
admirable  teacher,  a  wide-minded  theologian,  an  ear^ 
nest  and  a  reverent  Christian,  a  most  cordial,  loyal,  and 
animating  friend,  was  withdrawn  from  earthly  circles 
by  the  death,  before  age  had  touched  him,  of  Professor 
Caspar  Wistar  Hodge,  D.  D.  One  who  knew  him  well, 
in  his  public  work  and  his  fireside  life,  and  who  will 
always  recall  him  with  affectionate  honor  till  he  meets 
him  again  in  other  spheres,  counts  it  a  sad  pleasure  to 
associate  his  name,  familiar  and  beloved,  with  Lect« 
ures  to  which  he  had  given  warm  invitation  and  a 

generous  approval 

R.  &  8T0BBS. 

Pbooxltx»  N.  T.,  Oetobtr  10th,  189S. 


CONTENTS. 


■♦■ 


LECTURE  L 

The  Tsxth  Cxntubt:   its  bxi&bmb  Defbesszoh  and 

Fbab 8 


LECTURE  n. 

The  Elbyenth  Pentubt:    its  BxyiviNa  Life    and 

FHOMISE 69 


lecture  m. 

Bbbnabd  op  Clairtaux:   his  personal  Charactbe- 

isncs 183 


LECTURE  IV. 

Bbbnabd  op  Claibvauz  :  in  ms  Monactio  Lipb  •    •    207 


LECTURE  V. 
Bbbnabd  op  Claievaux:   as  a  Theologian     •    •    •    279 


L 


XYl  CONTENTS. 

LBCTUBB  VL 

PAOB 

BXBNABD  OP  ClAIBYAUX:    A8  A  Prbachbb    •      .      •      •     855 


LSCTUBB  Vn. 

BSRNABD  OF   ClAIBYAUX  :     IN  HIS    CONTROYEBST  WITH 

ABfaATO) 427 


LBCTUBE  Vm. 

Bbbnabd  OF  Claibyauz  :  IN  HIS  Relation  to  general 

EuBOPEAN  Affairs 509 


LECTURE  I. 

THE  TENTH  CENTT7BT:  ITS  EXTREME  DEPBE3- 

8I0N  AND  I'EAB. 


i 


LEOTUBE  L 
THB  miTH  centubt:  itb  eztbemb  bspbbbsion  and  fbab. 

It  is  a  pleasant  office  to  which  I  am  summoned,  to 
present  to  you  a  few  Lectures,  not  hastily  meditated  or 
planned  though  of  necessity  rapidly  written,  on  the 
times  and  the  career  of  the  extraordinary  man  known 
in  history  as  Bernard  of  Glairvauz.  I  cannot  hope  to 
set  before  you  any  multitude  of  facts  connected  with 
the  theme,  with  some  of  which,  at  least,  many  among 
you  are  not  acquainted.  But  I  have  a  diffident  hope 
of  so  reviving  the  impression  of  these  facts,  and  so 
showing  their  significance  by  setting  them  in  their  just 
relations,  as  to  leave  a  clearer  picture  than  is  commonly 
familiar,  even  among  those  not  unused  to  historical 
studies,  of  one  who  exercised  a  remarkable  authority  in 
his  own  time,  who  contributed  in  an  important  measure 
to  give  direction  and  tone  to  its  history,  the  effect  of 
whose  life  outlasted  its  term,  and  whose  name  will  not 
be  forgotten  while  men  still  honor  genius  and  virtue, 
exhibited  in  high  action  with  supreme  consecration. 

I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  add  that  my  reverent 
sense  of  isbe  singular  beauty  and  power  of  the  man,  and 
of  the  wide  relations  of  his  work,  is  by  no  means  of 
recent  beginning.  For  many  years  his  figure  has  been 
to  me  one  of  the  saintliest  and  most  heroic  on  the  can* 


4  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

vaB  of  European  history ;  and  my  attempt  now  to  present 
him,  in  connection  with  the  critical  and  threatening 
times  on  which  he  set  his  signal  mark,  has  its  impulse 
in  an  enthusiasm  which  began  long  ago,  and  which  does 
not  fail  as  years  adyance. 

Will  you  suffer  me,  too^  to  say  a  few  words,  at  the 
outset  of  these  Lectures,  on  the  general  usefulness  of 
studies  like  those  with  which  for  a  time  I  would  occupy 
your  thought  ? 

To  accustom  one's  self  to  a  too  exclusive  contempla- 
tion of  the  past,  whatever  occasional  splendid  exhibi- 
tions of  noble  action  or  illustrious  character  it  may 
present,  is  doubtless  a  sign  and  a  source  of  weakness. 
It  tends  to  give  undue  predominance  to  the  historical 
imagination,  while  leaving  the  powers  which  are  needed 
for  immediate  personal  work  without  adequate  exercise. 
It  may  subtly  foster  that  timid  spirit  which  is  scared 
by  the  questionings  and  repelled  by  the  contests  of 
which  each  active  century  is  full.  Every  man  has  hia 
work  to  do  in  his  own  time,  a  work  proportioned  to 
his  powers,  matching  his  opportunity,  and  opening  to 
him  the  real  privilege  of  intelligent  existence.  To 
retreat  from  such  work  into  a  merely  self-indulgent 
survey  of  past  struggles,  and  of  those  prominent  or 
principal  in  them,  is  to  exchange  duty  for  pleasure, 
obedience  to  conscience  for  alluring  reminiscence. 
There  is  here  a  temptation  to  which  studious  nien,  espe- 
cially those  of  a  sensitive  spirit,  are  always  exposed; 
and  it  becomes  only  more  seductive  in  times  like  ours, 
confused  in  thought,  full  of  haste  and  violence  in  opin* 
ion  and  action,  with  an  acrid  and  vehement  controver- 
sial temper  prevalent  in  it,  a  temper  almost  equally 
moved  to  sharpness  of  discussion  over  matters  funda- 
mental and  matters  superficial.      Against  such  an  in- 


V 


ITS  EXTREME  DEPBB88ION  AND   FEAB.  5 

clination,  to  a  withdrawal  of  our  minds  from  what  is 
presently  before  us  and  from  its  imperious  moral  de- 
mands, we  must  be  watchfully  on  our  guard  We  may 
not  retire  to  any  hermitage  in  the  past,  to  escape  col* 
lision  and  avoid  obligation,  any  more  than  we  may  fly 
from  the  land  of  our  birth,  however  it  echoes  with  clam- 
orous debate  or  now  and  then  rings  with  alarums  of 
war,  to  find  some  dainty  and  shameful  seclusion,  free 
from  strife  and  vacant  of  impulse,  on  tropical  shores. 

But  while  this  is  true,  it  is  true  as  well  that  to  bring 
a  former  period  of  time  distinctly  before  us,  to  become 
familiar  with  its  picturesque  or  presaging  movements, 
to  apprehend  clearly  the  moral  and  intellectual  forces 
by  which  it  was  either  graced  or  shamed,  above  all  to 
come  into  personal  sympathy  with  those  who  wrought  in 
it|  with  mighty  endeavor,  for  noble  ends, —  this  is  an 
exercise  of  mind  and  spirit  whose  instruction  and  fine 
incitement  can  scarcely  be  surpassed.  Our  horizon  is 
widened.  The  discerning  and  interpreting  faculty  in 
us  is  keenly  stimulated,  while  multitudes  of  particulars 
are  added  to  our  knowledge.  Whatever  sensibility  we 
possess  to  rare  and  rich  chivalric  properties  in  charac- 
ter or  work  is  freshly  awakened.  Duty  becomes  more 
beautiful,  and  more  commanding  in  its  challenge.  Our 
own  possibilities,  in  narrower  limits  of  faculty  and  in- 
fluence, become  more  apparent,  as  we  enter  into  intimate 
contact  with  the  devout  and  heroical  persons  whose 
names  are  borne,  lucid  and  eminent^  above  the  turbu- 
lent series  of  the  ages,  —  with  men  accomplished  in  the 
learning  of  their  time,  eager  in  its  enterprises,  effec- 
tive in  its  councils,  and  who  brought  to  it  an  ethereal 
temper  surpassing  its  own,  by  which  they  became  not 
only  helpers  of  its  progress,  but  founders  and  architects 
of  whatever  was  best  in  it 


6  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

We  do  not  always  fully  recognize  the  large  oppor- 
tunity thus  set  before  us.  We  may  not  absolutely 
select  our  associates  among  the  present  multitudes  who 
surround  us.  We  may  select  them  with  unhindered  free- 
dom as  we  walk  amid  the  populous  spaces  which  history 
opens ;  and  by  any  true  moral  conference  with  the  gentle 
and  gracious  yet  dauntless  persons  who  have  wrought 
heretofore  with  a  supreme  ardor  for  illustrious  aims, 
we  ought  to  be  ourselves  ennobled,  our  indolence  being 
rebuked,  our  timidity  expelled,  a  certain  elasticity  of 
vigor  coming  into  our  souls,  with  a  gladder  consecration 
to  ideal  ends.  It  is  possible,  at  least,  to  catch  some- 
tiiing  on  our  spirits  of  the  rush  of  their  uncalculating 
devotion;  to  take  finer  illumination  from  their  spiritual 
insight ;  to  feel  a  touch  of  the  sovereign  chrism  of  that 
communion  with  God  in  which  they  found  their  super- 
lative strength.  As  we  enter  this  fellowship  with  them 
we  are  released  for  the  time  from  the  petty  and  jarring 
strifes  with  which  our  passing  years  are  vexed;  we 
swing  clear  of  confining  limitations  to  region,  custom, 
the  prevalent  proximate  forms  of  opinion;  we  become 
in  a  just  sense  freemen  of  the  world,  partakers  in  stn^- 
gles  nobler  than  our  own,  humble  associates  of  elect  and 
anointed  spirits.  No  romance,  I  think,  can  stir  the 
soul,  no  lofty  rhyme  can  so  uplift  it,  as  does  this  vital 
contact  with  minds  now  vanished  from  the  earth,  but 
the  impulse  of  whose  life  continues  with  us,  of  the  fruit 
of  whose  work  Christendom  partakes. 

Nor  is  even  this  a  sufficient  account  of  the  moral  ad- 
vantage of  studies  like  that  which  I  propose.  Our  times, 
which  sometimes  appear  mechanical,  commonplace,  take 
deeper  significance  as  we  attentively  consider  the  past ; 
especially  as  we  note  the  far  reach  of  influence  in  those 
by  whom  its  movements  were  chiefly  affected.    The  tre- 


ITS  BZTBKME  DEPBE8BI0N  AND  FEAB.  7 

mendons  force  which  belongB  to  any  great  personalitj, 
and  the  sovereign  persistence  of  its  influence  among  men, 
become  apparent  We  gain  a  prof ounder  sense  of  the 
unity  of  history,  as  continuous  and  organic.  We  see 
more  distinctly  the  interdependence  of  centuries  on  each 
other,  with  our  indebtedness  to  many  who  have  labored 
and  struggled  before  us.  Above  all,  there  comes  to  us 
a  more  exhilarating  sense  of  the  potency  and  promise 
which  belong  to  each  Divine  element  in  the  progressive 
education  of  mankind ;  and  wherever  we  touch  with  rev- 
erent spirit  the  history  of  the  Church,  amid  whatever 
outward  confusions  or  inward  clash  of  dialectic  colli- 
sions, we  are  sensible  of  a  certain  majestic  advance  in 
the  scheme  of  its  development,  and  are  freshly  assured 
of  the  ultimate  victory  of  that  religion  from  which  its 
life  and  energy  have  come. 

Nothing  is  more  impressive  in  history  than  the  utter 
unreserve  of  power  with  which  men  have  been  moved,  in 
different  lands  and  in  separate  centuries,  by  an  impulse 
irom  above,  to  strive  as  for  their  life  for  the  supreme 
cause  of  righteousness  and  truth;  while  almost  noth- 
ing is  more  apparent  than  are  tiie  assisting  processes  of 
Providence,  moving  before  or  succeeding  such  men,  act- 
ing sometimes  on  occult  lines,  yet  with  a  fit  and  oppor- 
tune energy  which  brou^t  its  own  abundant  witness. 
The  history  of  Christianity,  as  it  lies  before  us  in  Euro- 
pean annals,  makes  it  evident  aa  the  day  that  with  a 
mighty  general  progress,  though  imdoubtedly  with  fre- 
quent sad  interruptions,  the  spiritual  life  in  persons 
and  in  peoples  has  been  impenetrated  with  that  heavenly 
force  which  came  to  the  world  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
Amid  whatever  infidelities  toward  the  truth,  whatever 
grOBsnesB  of  manners  or  sordidness  of  temper,  or  pas- 
sionate fury  against  the  "^  Shalt "  and  "^  Shalt  not "  of 


8  THE  TENTH  CENTDBT  : 

God's  law,  the  tender,  majestic,  and  solemn  facts  pre* 
sented  in  the  Gospel  are  shown  extending  their  sway, 
not  over  individuals  onlj,  but  over  the  minds  and  poli- 
cies of  nations ;  and  a  multitade  of  consenting  indica- 
tions appear,  pointing  to  their  final  universal  acceptance 
among  the  children  of  men. 

To  the  Christian  student^  here  is  really  the  most 
important  of  the  lessons  derived  from  the  past.  The 
gradual  mighty  upbuilding  on  earth  of  that  Kingdom 
of  God  for  which  even  they  looked  on  whom  had  not 
dawned  the  light  of  the  Advent,  for  which  apostles  and 
martyrs  wrought,  the  vision  of  which  exalted  Augustine 
amid  the  wrecks  of  human  empire,  the  vision  of  which 
never  has  passed  from  the  prescient  thought  of  great 
leaders  in  history, — this,  to  the  mind  devoutly  looking 
backward,  becomes  as  evident  as  any  phenomenon  of 
nature  to  the  eye;  while  the  saying  of  the  illustrious 
Numidian  is  verified,  that ''  as  oppositions  of  contraries 
lend  beauty  to  language,  so  the  beauty  of  the  course  of 
the  world  is  achieved  by  the  opposition  of  contraries, 
arranged  as  it  were  by  an  eloquence  not  of  words  but  of 
things."! 

In  like  manner,  the  significance  of  our  times,  as  con- 
nected with  this  Divine  scheme  for  the  world,  becomes 
more  evident,  and  the  influence  of  the  just  apprehen- 
sion of  this  is  always  inspiring.  In  a  broad  view  of 
history,  the  immediate  century  in  which  we  live  ceases 
to  be  so  undivine  as  sometimes  it  appears  in  an  air 
filled  with  the  whir  of  wheels,  with  smoke  of  factories 
darkening  the  sky,  amid  furious  clamors  of  unimpor- 
tant debate.  Our  years  stand  also  in  serious,  in  even 
momentous  relations,  with  ages  past,  and  with  ages  to 
come.      The  struggle  of  other  times,  in  which  fierce 

^  City  of  God,  L  zi.  e.  18. 


ITS  BXTBEMK  DEPRESSION   AND  FEAB.  9 

greed  or  desperate  ambitions  were  encountered  by  con- 
quering inspirations  of  faith,  prepared  the  way  for  the 
years  in  whose  happier  influence  we  delight.  Whatever 
is  best  in  our  civilization  is  an  inheritance  from  their 
laborious  and  painful  acquisition ;  while  the  times  which 
are  to  follow  should  take  in  like  manner,  if  not  in  like 
measure,  endowment  from  ours.  Gk)d's  plan  in  history 
no  more  contemplated  the  periods  which  are  gone  than 
it  contemplates  the  cycle  around  us,  of  novelty  in 
l^ought,  of  restless  exploration,  daring  enterprise,  an 
imperious  democracy.  As  the  Master  was  silently 
manifest  in  those  times,  through  the  motion  of  his 
Spirit  in  reverent  souls,  so  is  He  revealed  in  our  day, 
to  those  who  read  the  mystic  signs.  As  they  had  their 
Tast  problems  to  solve,  their  dangers  to  avert,  their 
frightful  evils  to  overcome,  so  we  have  ours ;  and  as  out 
of  them  great  influence  came,  the  issue  of  their  travail, 
to  invigorate  and  shape  subsequent  years,  so,  perhaps  in 
a  degree  not  inferior,  may  belong  to  our  century  a  like 
privilege  of  power,  if  in  it  be  the  temper,  of  spiritual 
efficacy,  which  in  them  broke  forth  into  mission  or 
martyrdom. 

The  earth  an  arena  in  which  Gk)d's  purpose  inces* 
santly  works  toward  the  final  aim  of  universal  and  holy 
peace ;  the  centuries  of  history  constituting  but  one  ter- 
restrial period,  in  which  the  experience  of  moral  toil, 
straggle,  and  conquest  continuously  goed  on;  the  con- 
Tergence  of  all  on  the  consummating  age  foreshown  of 
old  and  surely  coming, — these  are  lessons  which  con- 
stantly meet  us  in  any  interpreting  survey  of  the  past ; 
and  the  most  imposing  and  important  of  centuries,  as 
human  annals  reckon  importance,  or  those  which  appear 
most  fruitless  and  mean,  when  rightly  understood  will 
equally  supply  these  salutary  lessons.     Even  the  smaller 


10  THE  TENTH  OENTUBT  : 

things  in  the  record,  which  are  easily  overlooked,  will 
have  for  us  then  their  vital,  sometimes  indeed  their 
cosmical  meaning ;  since  out  of  cloister  and  cell,  out  of 
field  and  workshop^  as  well  as  out  of  library,  university, 
cathedral,  out  of  millions  uncounted  of  unremembered 
but  consecrated  lives,  as  well  as  out  of  state-debates, 
movements  of  armies,  eminent  careers,  has  come  the 
Christian  civilization  in  which  we  rejoice,  in  whose 
ampler  light  the  past  looks  shadowed,  but  whose  own 
imperfections  will  be  clearlier  shown  as  other  centuries 
follow  and  surpass  it.  Nothing  in  history,  which  is  true, 
is  therefore  to  us  unimportant  The  humblest  work, 
which  was  faithfully  done,  has  borne  its  fruit  The  age 
which  appears  least  conspicuous,  as  we  regard  it  from 
the  midst  of  present  confusions  and  hurries,  will  be 
sometime  seen  to  have  had  distinct  bearing  on  our 
years,  and  on  those  which  are  to  come. 

Certainly,  with  particular  emphasis,  this  is  true  of 
those  changeful  and  crowded  centuries  which  began  in 
the  fifth,  with  the  terrifying  fall  of  the  Latin  empire  in 
the  West,  and  which  closed  in  the  fifteenth,  with  the  loss 
to  Christendom  of  the  city  of  Constantine.  It  has  been 
at  times  a  fashionable  folly  to  regard  those  ages  as  a 
dreary  and  barren  parenthesis  in  history,  full  only  of 
vehement  clambrs,  prodigal  carnage,  lurid  superstitions, 
prelatical  ambition, — a  period  unattractive  in  itself, 
and  with  no  more  vital  relation  to  our  times  than  Nova 
Zembla  has  to  the  moral  and  commercial  life  of  our 
towns.  To  skip  this  period,  and  pass  at  once  from  the 
Old  World  to  the  New,  has  seemed  to  many  a  wise 
economy.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  in  fact  a  period 
full  of  stirring  prophetic  life,  of  indomitable  energies, 
of  moral  battles  and  moral  successes,  —  a  period  from 
which  benefits  come  to  every  hour  of  our  social  or 


IT8  EXTREME  DEPRESSION   AND   FEAR.  11 

political  experience.  In  the  vast  providential  commin- 
gling of  what  remained  of  the  Roman  civilization  with 
the  Teutonic  and  Slavic  barbarisms,  under  the  inex- 
haustible force  of  that  Christian  religion  to  which  im- 
perialism had  yielded,  and  which  barbarism  could  not 
subdue  or  expel,  were  evolved  stupendous  forces,  spiritual 
and  secular,  which  moulded  States,  produced  literatures, 
fashioned  and  maintained  religious  establishments,  put 
certain  impulses  into  society  whose  influence  is  to-day 
unspent  I  cannot  think  that  the  careful  student  of 
modem  history  will  question  the  just  perspective  of 
Ouizot,  when  he  says,  with  philosophical  deliberation 
as  well  as  with  ardent  historic  enthusiasm,  that  ^  there 
is  the  cradle  of  modern  societies  and  manners;  that 
modem  languages  date  from  those  times,  with  modem 
literatures,  so  far  as  these  are  national  and  original ;  that 
from  thence  are  derived  the  greater  part  of  the  monu- 
ments now  possessed, — churches,  palaces,  city-halls, 
works  of  art,  and  works  of  utility, — with  almost  all  the 
great  fiunilies  which  have  played  a  distinguished  part  in 
a£Fairs ;  while  there  are  presented  a  multitude  of  impor- 
tant and  splendid  national  events,  which  strike  with 
ever  fresh  force  the  popular  imagination. '  It  is,  as  he 
says,  ^  the  heroic  age  of  modem  nations.  What  more 
natural  than  its  richness  and  poetic  attraction?  "  ^ 

1  I>*iine  part,  il  est  impoaaible  de  m^imattre  qae  c'est  ]k  le  berceaa 
des  aocieti^  et  des  nKBais  modemes.  De  Ik  datent  les  langaee  modemes, 
flt  Bp^cialflment  la  ndtre;  lea  litt^Faturea  modernes,  pr^da^ment  dana  oe 
qa'eUea  out  de  national,  d'original,  d'etmnger  Ik  toate  science,  k  toute 
imitation  d'aatrea  tempe  et  d'antraa  pays;  la  plupart  des  monomenta 
modemea,  dea  monuments  oh  se  aont  raasembl^s  pendant  des  siMea  et  ae 
laaaemblent  encore  lee  peuplea,  ^lises,  palais,  hdtelB-de-TiUe^  ouTragea 
d*«rt  et  d'ntilittf  pnUique  de  tont  genre  ;  presqne  tontea  les  &miUes  his- 
toriqaes,  les  famillee  qui  ont  jon^  nn  rdle  et  place  lenr  nom  dans  les  di- 
▼enea  phasea  de  notre  destin^;  on  grand  nombre  d*eTent;ments  uationaux, 
iffiportaati  en  enz-mdmea  et  longtemps  populaires,  les  cnuaades,  la  cheya- 


12  THE  TENTH   CBNTUBT: 

What  more  natural,  we  may  properly  add,  than  that 
we  should  give,  as  opportunity  offers,  a  closer  attention 
to  a  period  so  full  of  vigor,  contest,  and  in  many  direc- 
tions, of  noble  achievement?  a  period  which  has  left 
ineffaceable  traces  on  subsequent  centuries,  and  which 
cannot  fail  to  be  re-studied  while  history  proceeds.  It 
would  be  worth  examination  if  only  for  the  manifesta- 
tion which  it  makes  of  the  forces  of  human  nature,  the 
best  and  the  worst  coming  equally  to  light,  as  secrets  of 
the  seas  are  flung  into  sight  beneath  stroke  of  tempests. 
It  becomes  more  worthy  of  considerate  study  as  we  re- 
cognize the  public  tendencies  there  initiated  or  con- 
firmed, or  violently  thwarted,  the  vast  processes  there 
set  in  motion,  of  thought  and  law,  of  national  enter- 
prise, or  of  victorious  Christian  advance.  One  speaks 
temperately  in  saying  that  to  know  that  time  is  to  gain 
a  clearer  and  juster  apprehension  of  much  which  has 
followed  in  Church  and  in  State.  It  is,  in  fact,  to  trace 
to  their  rooto  many  things  which  our  age  is  proud  to 
possess. 

It  is  under  the  impulse  of  thoughts  like  these  that  I 
propose  to  set  before  you,  as  far  as  I  may  in  this  series 
of  lectures,  the  life  and  spirit,  the  genius  and  wolit,  of 
the  great  Bernard,  Abbot  of  Clairvaux ;  to  set  him  dis- 
tinctly amid  the  angry  collisions  of  his  time,  and  to 
show  in  a  measure  what  influence  he  exerted  on  its 
princes  and  pontiffs,  as  well  as  on  its  general  popular 
development.  I  am  confident  that  the  careful  study  of 
one  whose  place  in  his  age  was  so  distinguished  cannot 
but  be  of  interest  to  us.     I  hope,  indeed,  that  it  may 

lerie ;  en  an  mot,  presqne  tout  ce  qni  a  pr^oocnp^,  agit^  pendant  dee  sitelee, 
rimagination  du  people  ftwofaia.  C'est  ^k  ^Tidemment  I'Age  beroiqne  des 
nations  modernea.  Qnoi  de  pins  natural  qne  aa  richeaae  et  aon  attrait 
po^tiqne !  —  Hut.  d$  la  Civil,  en  t^ranee,  torn.  iiL  p.  222.  Paria  ed.» 
1840. 


m  HZT&KMR  DEPBBBSION  AND  FEAB.       18 

sbow  its  fruit  in  generous  and  ennobling  personal  sug- 
gestions. It  is  not  the  miracle  of  a  perfect  life  which 
we  are  to  contemplate ;  not  a  soul  without  weakness  or 
sin  into  fellowship  with  which  I  would  help  you  to  enter. 
But  it  is  certainly  a  significant  fact  that  men  of  the  most 
diverse  opinions,  as  remote  as  possible  in  church  rela- 
tions, have  conspired  to  offer  to  the  Abbot  of  Clairvaux 
their  tributes  of  honor.  He  was  formally  canonized  in 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  as  you  know,  by  Alex- 
ander Third,  a  little  more  than  twenty  years  Biter  his 
death,  ^  and  a  church-festiTal  was  established  in  homage 
to  him.  Those  registered  on  the  Papal  catalogues  of 
saints  have  by  no  means  always  attracted  admiration  in 
subsequent  time.  But  in  the  instance  of  Bernard  it 
does  not  surprise  us  that  Thomas  Aquinas,  in  the  fol- 
lowing century,  should  compare  him  to  a  vase  of  gold  on 
account  of  his  holiness,  and  to  a  multitude  of  pearls  on 
account  of  the  multiplicity  of  his  virtues ; '  that  Bona- 
ventnra  should  describe  him  as  gifted  with  a  sublime 

^  '^Hx  ft  aiero  ipdus  obitii  aimi  decern  efflnzennt,  com  in  ooneilio 
Toroiieiiai,  anno  1168  celebrato^  aedente  et  prandente  Alezandro  IIL, 
ea  tm  primmn  agiteri  ccBpit.  At  tommns  Pontifez,  qaamYie  alioqni  pro  sua 
evga  Beraaidnm  Tenentione  libentisaime  annaiflaet,  tantiaper  nihilominna 
difimndam  oenaoit  ob  eaa  rationes,  qnaa  ipse  in  litteria  Ganonizationia 
postea  expoanit.  .  .  .  Incidit  eigo  Bemardi  sacra  inangoratio  in  diem 
is  menaia  jannarii,  anni  1174 ;  ab  ^na  obita  viginti  annia  exactia,  mon- 
aibiia  qaataar,  et  dieboa  Tiginti  noyem.  .  .  .  Sed  jam  anmmi  pontifida 
Atorandri  III.  littenay  qniboa  inter  coditea  ab  Ecoleaia  relataa  oatenditar 
Bamaidoa,  ptoffwamQa.  —  StmeU  Bemardi  Opera,  toL  ii.  oblL  2598-94. 

The  pontiiloal  letten  follow,  to  col.  9600. 

1  Annun  fiilt  omnibaa  oa  ejna  de  Deo  loqnendo ;  mnltitado  gemmaram 
da  moribaa  et  firtntibiia  loqnendo»  de  dnloedine  oontemplationia,  et  devo- 
tioniau  .  .  .  Fneront  ergo  labia  ^na  anrea,  gemmea,  et  pretioBa.  Yd 
aumm  ftiit  beatoa  Bemaidna  per  yoluntatia  sanctitatem ;  mnltitado  gem- 
maram  per  momm  honestatem,  et  liitntam  mnltiplicttatem;  Taa  pretio- 
aran  per  Tiiginitatia  poritatem.  —  Sermo  infuti  B.  Btmardi;  Div,  Thorn. 
Afwm,  StrmmiM,  p.  116.    Yenetiia,  1787. 


14  THE  TENTH  GENTUBT : 

eloquence,  while  of  a  temper  so  rich  in  saintly  wisdom 
that  not  only  his  words  are  memorable,  but  his  life  is  a 
constant  example.^  It  does  not  surprise  us  that  Ba- 
ronius  should  speak  of  him  as  a  true  apostle  of  Gkxl,  the 
stay  and  splendor  of  the  whole  Church,  especially  of  the 
Church  in  France;'  that  the  learned  and  devout  Ma- 
billon  should  count  his  writings  next  in  value  to  the 
Scriptures  themselves  for  religious  minds;'  that  Bos* 
suet  should  associate  him  as  a  witness  for  doctrine 
with  the  illustrious  Fathers  of  the  Church,  and  de« 
scribe  him  as  appearing,  in  the  midst  of  barbaric 
ignorance,  an  apostle,  a  prophet,  an  earthly  angel, 
demonstrated  such  by  his  preaching,  his  works,  and  by 
that  spirit  in  his  life  which  still  surpassed  his  prodigies 
of  power ;  ^  or  that  Martdne,  in  the  last  century,  in  his 

1  Andisti  igitnr  Terba  pulcherrima  altiasimi  oontemplAntia,  et  ora- 
tionnm  doloedinem  degustantis  BemaxdL  RamineB  ea  ri  via,  ut  aapiaat 
tibi.  •  .  •  Ipse  enxm  fuit  eloquentissimiu,  et  spiritu  sapientia  plenm,  et 
flanctitate  pt»clanu ;  qaem  te  desideio  imitari,  et  ipsius  monita  et  verb* 
opera  exerceze,  propter  quod  ssepe  tibi  propono  enndem.  —  MeditaUomm 
VUm  CImaUf  cap.  zzxTi.    Opera,  torn.  vi.  p.  861. 

*  Yere  Apostolicua  Tir,  immo  verus  Apostolus  missas  a  Deo,  potena 
opere  et  sermone,  iUoatrans  nbique  et  in  oomibas  saom  Apoetolatam  sa* 
qaentibua  aignis,  ut  plane  nihil  minua  babuerit  a  magnis  Apostolia.  .  .  • 
Et  qui  dicenduB  sit  totiua  Ecclesia  Gatbolica  omamentum  simul  ac  fuki- 
mentum;  Gallicann  vero  in  primis  Eoclesis  predicandus  sit  snmmnm  de- 
cus,  Bumma  gloria,  snmma  felicitas.  —  ^»na/.  SedeB,  (Luos,  174dX  torn, 
zix.  p.  78  [an.  1168]. 

*  Yerum  ex  omnibus  libris,  quos  possnnt,  ant  debent  monacbi  evolven. 
nuUus  post  sacra  Yolumina  superest,  qui  m^ri  queat  ipsia  esse  emoln* 
mento,  quemque  pree  manibus  magis  habere  teneantnr,  qnam  Opera  DiW 
Bemardi;  ...  in  banc  quippe  mixta  fluunt,  quacumque  alibi  disperaa 
occurmnt,  nimimm  soliditaa,  yenustas,  rarietas,  proprietas,  brevitas,  fer- 
vor, et  eneigia  sermonis.  —  Trad,  da  Stud,  MowuL,  torn.  L  pars  iL  oap. 
ilL  S  2.    Yenet  ed.  1729,  p.  117. 

*  Bossuet  associates  Bernard  as  a  witness  for  doctrine  witli  Auguatine, 
Tertullian,  Cyprian,  Clement.  —  (Buvres  ehoiaiet,  torn.  xv.  pp.  264-S95. 
Paris  ed.,  1828. 


ITS  EZTBESUB  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAR.  15 

extensiTe  visitation  of  monasteries,  should  note  with 
particolar  and  affectionate  care  every  memorial  of  Ber- 
nard,— copies  of  his  manuscripts,  the  cross  at  V^zelai 
in  memory  of  him,  the  chair  from  which  he  preached  at 
Sens,  his  chalice  and  chasuble,  his  tombstone,  and  his 
portrait  The  remembrance  of  him  was  still  so  vital 
that  it  sanctified  everything  which  he  might  be  even 
supposed  to  have  touched,  for  the  diligent  and  studious 
Benedictine.^ 

But  for  us  it  perhaps  enhances  such  eulc^es  that 
Luther  also  should  speak  of  him  as  the  most  Ood-fear- 
ing  and  pious  of  monks,  whom  he  held  in  higher  love 
than  all  others ;  ^  that  Daniel  Heinsius,  the  famous  and 
learned  Secretary  of  the  Synod  of  Dort,  should  call  his 
^Meditations"  a  stream  of  Paradise,  the  ambrosia  of 
souls,  an  angelic  food,  the  quintessence  of  piety ; '  that 
the  austere  and  accurate  Calvin  should  describe  him  as 
a  pious  and  holy  writer,  above  his  time,  pungent  and 
discriminating  in  rebuke  of  its  errors ;  ^  while  Neander, 
in  our  time,  has  pronounced  an  encomium  on  his  cen- 
tury for  having  submitted  itself  to  his  moral  authority.^ 
Nor  is  it  certainly  without  significance  that  even  Vol- 
taire should  speak  of  him  as  able  beyond  others  to 
reconcile  occupation  in  the  uproar  of  affairs  with  the 
austeriiy  of  life  proper  to  his  religious  state,  and  as 

I  Toja^  liMiaire.  Pazis,  1717.  P^m.  Par.,  pp.  28»  58,  eo,  99, 104; 
See.  Ft.,  p.  205,  d  al. 

*  Table  TaDc,  eeoozc. 

*  QqJs  flotTitiB  Bernardo  scribit  ?  CigiiB  ego  Meditationes  riynm  para- 
diaiy  ambnaiam  animaram,  pabalam  itwg^llftmn,  mednllam  pietatia  yocare 
•oleo(Ont  8).  —S.  Btr.  citera,  vol.  aec  ooL  2618. 

a  Instftatea  of  Christ  Beligion,  iv.  5,  >  12;  7,  {f  18,  22;  11,  (  11,  el  al. 

*  Nieht  za  venefaten  acheint  una  das  Zeitalter,  in  welcbem  ein  Mann, 
voa  kainem  weltlichen  Qlanze  nmgaben,  darch  seine  sittliche  Kraft,  dnreh 
die  Hohe  ond  Starke  seines  Oeistes  sich  so  grosses  Ansehen  nnd  so  groa- 
isn  Kinflnaa  verachaffte.  —  Der  heilige  Bemhard,  s   522. 


16  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

having  attained  a  personal  consideration  anrpassing  in 
efficacy  official  authority ;  ^  that  Gibbon  should  portray 
him,  in  spite  of  an  inveterate  prejudice  i^ainst  saints^ 
as  standing  high  above  his  contemporaries,  in  speech, 
in  writing,  and  in  action,  and  making  himself  ^the 
oracle  of  Europe. "  * 

It  can  hardly  remain  a  matter  for  doubt  that  one  who 
was  confessedly  so  conspicuous  and  so  influential  in  the 
Christendom  of  his  age,  and  who  has  attracted  eulogies 
like  these  from  writers  so  remote  in  time,  character, 
opinion,  especially  in  their  relations  to  the  themes  and 
institutes  of  religion,  must  be  deserving  of  our  study. 
It  cannot  be  otherwise  than  useful  for  us  to  set  him  dis- 
tinctly amid  his  times,  to  see  what  mark  he  made  upon 
them,  and  to  trace  as  carefully  as  we  may  Uie  secrets  of 
that  extraordinary  power  which  all  who  approached  him 
appear  to  have  felt ;  which  made  him  to  them  —  which 
should  make  him  to  us  —  a  true  priest  of  God,  minister* 
ing  grace  and  force  from  above.  If  it  be  in  its  nature 
ennobling  to  meditate  on  a  life  devoted  to  sovereign 
ideals,  to  contemplate  a  soul  ardent,  intense,  pas* 
sionate  in  enthusiasm,  while  devout,  self-forgetful,  and 
wholly  disdainful  of  worldly  pleasures  and  of  secular 
prizes ;  if  any  virtue  may  be  derived  from  contact  vnih 
a  mind  which  dwelt  habitually  in  the  adoring  contem- 
plation of  God,  and  to  which  the  earth  was  not  as  real 
as  were  celestial  r^alms  above, — we  ought,  certainly, 
to  be  better  and  nobler  persons  for  the  hours  which  wo 
spend  with  Saint  Bernard.     He  will  say  to  us  still,  as 

1  **  Jamais  roligienx  n'ayait  mienx  concilia  le  tamulte  des  affaires  aveo 
YwoMtMU  de  son  ^tat ;  aacnn  n'^tait  arrive  comme  lui  Ik  cette  conaid^ratioii 
parement  penonnelle  qui  est  audessns  de  raatorit^  m&ne." — JSMOf  not 
l€$  Mcsursy  chap.  Iv.  p.  206.    (Eavres,  Paris,  1877. 

s  Decline  and  Fall,  yoI.  tU.  p.  408.    London  ed.,  1848. 


TUB  EXTftKMS  DEPRBBSIOK  AND  FEAR.  17 

he  said  of  old  in  cloister  or  chapel  to  ihoae  who  eagerly 
flocked  around  him,  leaving  all  things  otherwise  pre- 
cious for  the  delight  of  nearness  to  him :  ^  If  thou  writ- 
esty  nothing  therein  has  savor  to  me  unless  I  read  Jesus 
in  it  If  thou  discoursest  or  conversest,  nothing  there 
is  agreeable  to  me  unless  in  it  also  Jesus  resounds. 
Jesus  is  honey  in  the  mouth,  melody  in  the  ear,  a  song 
of  jubilee  in  the  heart  He  is  our  medicine,  as  welL 
Is  any  among  you  saddened  ?  Let  Jesus  enter  into  his 
hearty  and  thence  leap  to  his  lips,  and  lo !  at  the  rising 
illumination  of  His  name  every  cloud  flies  away,  se- 
renity returns. "  ^  His  written  words  may  still  impress 
US,  as  they  did  those  who  heard  them  at  first:  ^^Not 
without  reward  is  Ood  to  be  loved,  thou^  He  is  to  be 
loved  without  the  expectation  of  reward.  True  love  is 
wholly  satisfied  in  itself.  It  has  a  reward,  but  the 
reward  is  in  the  object  which  is  loved. "  '  ^  To  whom 
may  I  more  fitly  live  than  to  Him  except  for  whose 
death  I  should  not  live  ?  But  I  serve  Him  in  perfect 
freedom,  since  love  gives  liberty.  Serve  you,  also,  in 
that  love  which  casteth  out  fear,  whiich  feels  no  labors, 
is  conscious  of  no  merit,  asks  no  price,  and  which  yet 
has  in  it  more  urgent  impulse  than  everything  else. 
will  join  you  inseparably  with  me ;  it  will  mani- 


1  iLridns  est  omnia  mimaa  dhaa,  si  non  oleo  isto  infbnditar ;  insipi* 
dns  erty  si  son  hoe  sale  oonditnr.  Si  acribaa,  non  Bapit  mihi  niai  legaro 
ibi  Joamn.  8i  diapntaa  ant  conferaa,  non  aapit  mihi,  niai  aonnerit  ibi 
Jeaoa.  Jeana  mel  in  ore,  in  anre  meloa»  in  oorde  jnbHaa.  Sed  est  at 
madidna,  Triatatai^  aliqnia  veatnim  T  Yeniat  in  oor  Jeana,  et  inde  aaliat 
in  oa;  et  ooee  ad  ezortnm  nominia  Inmen,  nnbilnm  omne  diffogit,  redit 
aerannm.  —  VoL  prim,,  Ser,  in  CafU,^  xy.  C ;  coL  2744. 

*  Hon  enim  aina  prmnio  diligitnr  Deoa,  etai  abaqne  pnsmii  intuitu 
diUgiendoa  ait.  •  .  .  Varna  amor  ae  ipeo  contentna  eat.  Habet  pneminm, 
aed  id  qnod  amator. »  Fo^.  prim,,  l^nuL  d$  dtiig.  Jka.  Cap.  viL  1 17; 
€oL  1S4S. 

a 


18  THE  TENTH  CEMTUBT : 

feat  me  immediately  to  yon,  dearest  Brethren,  most 
longed  for,  especially  in  the  hours  when  you  pray. "  ^ 
Let  us  try  to  bring  this  man,  in  his  personal  image, 
plainly  before  us,  and  to  set  him  clearly  amid  Hie  times 
in  which  he  lived,  since  it  was  by  the  constant  demand 
of  those  times  upon  him,  with  the  responsive  impact 
upon  them  of  his  energetic  and  conquering  spirit,  that 
his  faculties  were  trained,  his  personal  character  was 
unfolded  and  matured,  and  his  work  made  of  memorable 
effect  No  effort  of  the  imagination  can  present  any 
tolerable  picture  of  Bernard  except  as  it  places  him  in 
close  association  with  the  age  which  felt  his  impress ; 
and  even  his  particular  century  needs  to  be  exhibited 
in  that  which  it  had  taken  from  previous  times,  and 
in  that  which  it  gave  to  those  that  came  after,  that  we 
may  have  a  fair  impression  of  his  almost  unique  career. 
It  is  a  crude  and  careless  fancy  which  imagines  the 
several  centuries  which  passed  within  the  time-limits 
that  I  have  indicated  to  have  been  equally  ignorant^ 
stolid,  sordid,  proceeding  on  a  dreary  level  of  sluggish 
dulness,  no  one  being  specially  differenced  from  others, 
and  no  one  offering  an  opportunity  beyond  oiliers  for 
noble  work.  On  the  other  hand,  the  differences  between 
those  centuries  were  vital  and  profound ;  one  of  splendid 
achievement  being  followed  by  others  of  decadence  or 
downfall,  in  which  the  life  of  Christendom  seemed 
threatened,  while  these  in  turn  gave  place  to  others  of 
larger  promise,  and  in  the  issue  affecting  with  benefi* 

4 

A 

1  Cni  enim  Jnstitift  yiyam  qaam  ei,  qui  si  non  moBBNtiir,  ago  mm  ▼!▼- 
erem  T  .  .  .  Sed  senrio  yolantarie,  quia  charitas  liberUtem  donat.  Sarvitt 
in  charitata  Qla,  qua  timorem  expallit,  laboiaa  non  aentit,  maritnm  noa 
intaator,  pnemium  non  reqnirit;  at  taman  plus  omnibus  uigat.  .  .  . 
Ipia  Toa  mihi  inaaparabUitar  jnni^t,  ipia  me  Tobia  jngitar  rapneaantatp 
horia  maxima  qnibna  oratia,  chariaaimi  at  daaidaratiaaiiiii  finatraa.  —  Fat. 
prim.,  J^ftL  ezlifi.  [ad  Saoa,  QUm  TaU.]  ooL  Ui. 


^ 


ITS  EZTBEHE  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAB.  19 

cent  impulse  the  subsequent  time.  It  was  in  one  of 
the  latter  periods,  as  thus  morally  distinguished,  that 
Bernard  found  his  place  and  his  work. 

He  was  bom  in  the  year  a.  d.  1091 ;  twenty-five  years 
after  the  Norman  conquest  of  England ;  eighteen  years 
after  Hildebrand  had  been  consecrated  Pope,  under  the 
title  of  Gregory  Seventh;  while  Philip  First,  the  third* 
successor  of  Hugh  Capet,  was  in  the  midst  of  his  long 
reign  of  almost  half  a  century  in  France.  The  time  in 
which  his  life  was  cast  was  separated  thus  by  an  inter- 
Yal  of  three  hundred  years  from  that  age  of  Charlemagne 
which  still  remains  prominent  and  brilliant  i it^ropean 
annals,  while  the  interval  had  been  one,  to  an  extent 
never  surpassed,  of  fear,  of  gloom,  almost  of  despair, 
out  of  which  neither  the  Church  nor  the  State  had  fully 
emerged.  An  influence  from  the  remoter  century  still 
survived,  however,  in  the  West  It  had  prompted  what- 
ever effort  had  been  made  for  better  things  in  the  period 
now  closing;  and  in  Bernard's  time  there  was  a  certain 
moral  life,  a  certain  responsiveness  to  moral  impres- 
sion, in  men  and  in  society,  which  had  not  equally  ap- 
peared a  century  before,  while  yet  the  perils  of  his  age 
were  so  great,  its  shames  so  many,  that  certainly  none 
since  Christendom  began  has  more  needed  the  mightiest 
ministry  which  genius,  virtue,  and  a  consummate  devo- 
tion could  supply.  To  set  the  character  of  his  time 
clearly  before  you  will  not  be  difficult,  but  it  will  ask 
jonr  patience  for  an  attentive  review.  Such  confused, 
imperious,  turbulent  elements  as  it  presents,  in  tumul- 
taous  combination  or  in  angry  collision,  cannot  be  un- 
derstood without  retracing  the  centuries  out  of  which 
fhey  had  come,  and  the  mark  of  whose  disordered  and 
passionate  life  was  palpably  upon  them.  One  would 
not  delay  for  this  if  it  could  be  avoided,  but  I  see  not 


20  IBB  TBMTH  CKNTDBT: 

how  it  can  be.  To  know  the  man  we  must  know  the 
age  on  which  his  influence  was  majestically  exerted, 
and  on  which  his  name  still  sheds  its  lustre ;  and  we 
cannot  know  this  without  knowing,  in  general,  out  of 
what  diverse  precedent  forces  its  life  had  come. 

Of  course,  however,  it  is  wholly  impossible  within 
the  compass  of  a  lecture,  or  a  couple  of  lectures,  to  de- 
lineate with  careful  minuteness  the  features  of  the  cen* 
turies  preceding  his.  I  can  only  outline,  in  a  rapid 
free-hand  way,  some  prominent  courses  of  experience 
and  action  along  which  they  had  moved,  with  the  rude, 
reckless,  infuriated  forces  working  in  them,  a  part  of 
whose  outcome  was  in  the  ebullient  and  violent  life, 
civil  and  social,  religious,  military,  political,  in  the 
midst  of  which  we  are  to  place  Bernard.  To  paint  in 
few  words  a  storm  at  sea  were  a  task  from  whieb  most 
would  doubtless  shrink.  To  exhibit  any  distinct  pano- 
rama of  the  almost  chaotic  period  which  preceded  his 
life  is  a  work  more  difficult,  which  must  still  be  at* 
tempted.  You  will  not  look  for  grace  of  movement,  or 
lightness  of  touch,  in  the  hand  which  tries  it 

The  lowest  point  which  civilization  has  reached  in 
Europe  since  the  century  and  a  half  which  followed  the 
fracturing  of  the  western  empire  by  Odoacer,  a.  d.  476, 
was  that  which  it  found  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  and  the 
beginning  of  the  eleventh  of  the  Christian  centuries. 
For  the  tenth  of  these,  especially,  ^'  The  Iron  Age  "  has 
been  a  common  name  in  history  since  Baronius  wrote* 
His  description  of  it  ba  the  '^sasculum  obscurum*'  is 
also  fitly  and  frequently  repeated.^    It  is  not  difficult  to 

^  Novtiin  inchoatar  sflBcnlnm,  quod  sua  asperitate,  ao  boni  sterilitate 
feTTBam,  maliqae  ezndantis  deformitate  plumbeom,  atqoe  inopia  aeripto- 
mm  appellari  ooDBuevit  obacuruin.  —  Bakomius:  AjwoI,  EochHait,,  torn, 
zv.  p.  500.    Lnoaa^  174i, 


ITS  EXTREME  DEPRESSION  AKD  FEAR.  21 

trace  fhe  events  which  had  led  to  this  disastrous  con- 
summation ;  and  it  is  the  more  needful  to  do  this  be* 
cause  that  century  followed  a  period,  after  no  long 
interval,  of  surprising  achievement  and  extraordinary 
promise. 

The  invasion  of  central  Europe  by  the  Saracens,  who 
had  conquered  large  parts  of  Spain  and  of  southern 
France,  and  who  thence  had  swarmed  forth  for  the  con- 
quest of  the  Continent,  had  been  arrested,  as  all  are 
aware,  by  Charles  Martel,  in  the  shattering  victory 
gained  by  him  on  the  famous  field  between  Poictiers 
and  Tours,  in  the  early  autumn  of  a.d.  732,  when  the 
^victorious  line  of  march,"  which,  as  Gibbon  says,  ^^had 
been  prolonged  above  a  thousand  miles,  from  the  rock  of 
Gibraltar  to  the  banks  of  the  Loire, '*  was  finally  broken, 
by  ^the  breasta  which  were  like  solid  ramparts,  and  the 
arms  which  were  iron."^  There  was  thenceforth  no 
formidable  threat  that  Asia  and  Africa  might  subjugate 
Europe,  that  the  Arab  might  be  lord  of  the  Teuton  and 
the  Briton,  or  that  the  interpretation  of  the  Koran,  ac- 
cording to  the  startling  fancy  of  the  historian,  might  be 
taught  in  the  schools  of  Oxford,  and  '^her  pulpits  de- 
monstrate to  a  circumcised  people  the  sanctity  and 
truth  of  the  revelation  of  Mahomet"  It  suggests  a 
lesson  not  unimpressive  of  our  unconscious  indebted- 
ness to  the  past,  that  men  who  could  have  known  little 
of  England,  and  nothing  of  this  continent,  should  by 
ttieir  courage,  constancy,  and  sacrifice,  have  saved 
both  in  the  subsequent  centuries  from  indescribable 
moral  disaster.  Our  churches,  colleges,  Christian 
homes,  have  root  and  nutriment  to  this  hour  in  the 
soil  soaked  with  the  blood  of  those  who  fought  eleven 

t  DwliiiA  and  Fall,  yol.  vii.  pp.  17-28.    London  ed.,  184a 


22  YHB  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

and  a  half  centuries  ago,  in    that  fierce  and  fateful 
battle.  1 

One  greater  than  Charlesi  Charlemagne  his  grand- 
son, at  the  beginning  of  the  ninth  century,  had  done 
a  greater  work  than  his,  also  intimately  connected  with 
the  rescue  and  progress  of  civilization.  It  is  possible, 
no  doubt,  perhaps  it  is  common,  to  place  an  extraya* 
gant  estimate  on  the  achievements  of  this  extraordinary 
man  —  ^^  the  genius  of  the  Middle  Age  "  —  in  connection 
with  the  development  of  Europe.  Sismondi's  cautious 
and  discreet  praise  may  represent  the  truth  with  more 
exactness  than  do  the  exuberant  eulogies  of  others.  It 
is  certainly  true,  as  that  discriminating  historian  sug- 
gests, that  the  signal  brilliance  of  the  reign  of  the  great 
emperor  shines  more  brightly,  like  that  of  a  sudden  and 
splendid  meteor,  because  of  the  darkness  which  had 
preceded  and  which  followed  it;'  and  it  is  perhaps 

^  Dr.  Arnold's  estimate  of  the .  importance  of  the  yietory  of  Charles 
Martel  is  indicated  in  a  passage  of  his  "  History  of  the  later  Boman  Com* 
monwealth : "  "If  this  be  so  [that  unchecked  Roman  snccesses  in  Germany 
would  have  Latinized  the  Teutonic  tribes]  the  victory  of  Anninius  do- 
serves  to  be  reckoned  among  those  signal  deliverances  which  have  affected 
for  centuries  the  happiness  of  mankind ;  and  we  may  regard  the  destruc- 
tion of  Quintilius  Varus  and  his  three  l^ons  on  the  banks  of  the  Lippe 
as  second  only  in  the  benefits  derived  from  it  to  the  victory  of  Charlea 
Kartel  at  Tours  over  the  invading  host  of  the  Mohammedans.*'  Chi^.  zL 
p.  468.    New  York  ed.,  1846. 

*  Le  r^e  de  Charlemagne  est  un  grand  m^t^ore  qui  briUe  dans  I'ob* 
scurite,  Ik  un  trop  grand  floignement  pour  que  nous  puissions  I'^tadier 
et  le  comprendre.  On  est  frappe  de  son  eclat  que  pr4c«d^rent  et  que  sni. 
virent  d'epaisses  t^nibres ;  on  I'admire,  mais  on  ne  sauroit  calculer  sea 
effets,  mieux  que  reconnoitre  ses  causes,  et  Ton  ne  peut  mtee  af&rmer 
s'il  fht  avantageuz  ou  pernicieuz  pour  rhumanit^.  —  Biat,  du  Frangait, 
torn.  ii.  p.  421.     Paris  ed.,  1821. 

Guizot's  estimate  of  Charlemagne's  work  differs  from  this;  but  he 
adopts  the  same  image  of  the  meteor,  and  likens  the  empire  of  Charle- 
magne to  that  of  the  first  Napoleon.  '  Hist,  de  la  CtviL  en  France,  tomu 
iL  pp.  110-118.    Paris  ed.,  1846. 


1TB  SZTUMB  D1SPBE8S10K  AND  FBAB.  28 

equally  tme  that  his  vast  schemes  had  in  them  too^ 
large  an  imaginative  element  to  be  capable  of  effective 
accomplishment  at  a  time  so  early  and  so  rude.  But 
whatever  criticism  may  be  made  on  his  plans  and  his 
career,  and  however  fully  it  must  be  admitted  that  his 
masterful  intellect  and  inexorable  energy  were  indis- 
pensable to  his  plans,  while  they  could  not  naturally 
survive  himself,  it  remains  true  that  his  work  was  of 
inunense  and  permanent  significance,  and  of  cosmical 
value ;  that  it  showed  the  possibility,  at  least,  of  secur- 
ing on  the  Continent  public  order  with  regulated  liberty ; 
and  that,  if  it  did  not  lay  solid  and  enduring  founda- 
tions for  these,  the  fault  was  rather  in  the  weakness 
and  incoherence  of  his  materials  than  in  his  own  pru- 
dence and  plan*  He  anticipated  his  age  in  his  large 
conceptions ;  and  the  peoples  were  not  ready  for  those 
general  effects  which  were  governing  aims  both  in  his 
counsels  and  in  his  campaigns. 

I  could  not,  of  course,  even  if  moved  to  it,  delineate 
his  work  in  any  detail  It  is  enough  to  remind  you  that 
in  more  than  fifty  great  military  expeditions  he  con- 
quered a  large  part  of  Italy,  down  almost  to  Calabria; 
he  practically  delivered  Spain  from  the  Saracens  be- 
tween the  Pyrenees  and  the  Ebro ;  he  subdued  the  Bava- 
rians and  the  Saxons,  and  compelled  them  to  accept 
what  was  then  known  as  Christianity  in  Europe;  he 
extended  his  empire  over  Bohemia  and  Carinthia,  fought 
the  Slaves,  and  repulsed  in  the  ancient  Pannonia  the 
fierce  Avars  who  had  become  a  terror  to  every  people 
striving  toward  better  civilization.  He  gave,  for  the 
time,  territorial  security  to  central  and  western  Europe, 
from  the  North  Sea  to  the  Tiber,  from  near  the  Iron 
Gate  of  the  Danube  westward  to  the  ocean ;  and  when 
he  returned  to  Aix-la-Chapelle,  after  being  proclaime^J 


24  THE  TENTH  GENTUBT: 

Emperor  of  the  West  at  Sb  Peter's  in  Borne,  on  Christ- 
mas-Day  in  the  year  a.d.  800,^  his  dominions  embraced 
substantially  two  thirds  of  the  ancient  western  Roman 
empire,  including  (German  lands  which  that  empire  never 
had  conquered,  while  the  forces  at  his  command  for 
compacting  the  unity  and  extending  the  area  of  these 
dominions  had  been  hardly  surpassed  by  those  of  any^ 
in  any  age,  who  had  worn  and  sullied  the  imperial 
purple. 

His  expeditions,  you  observe,  were  not  mere  raids, 
but  were  organized  campaigns,  designed  to  accomplish 
permanent  effects.  In  a  measure,  they  did  accomplish 
such ;  and  though  it  is  true,  as  Guizot  has  said,  that  the 
disorder  which  confronted  him  was  not  only  inmiense 
but  at  the  time  unsubduable,  so  that  when  repressed  at 
one  point  it  broke  forth  at  another  the  moment  his  ter- 
rible will  was  withdrawn,  it  is  also  true,  as  the  grave 
historian  reminds  us,  that  all  the  States  which  sprang 
from  the  subsequent  dismemberment  of  the  Empire  were 
founded  by  these  wars  of  Charlemagne.  Only  in  con- 
sequence of  these  wars  did  such  States,  rising  from  the 
scarred  battle-fields  of  swarming  barbarians,  become 

^  Ipse  antem  cum  die  sacratiflsima  nataUa  Domini  ad  miBsaram  eolem- 
nia  cdebranda  basilicam  beati  Petri  apoetoli  fuisset  ingresecu,  et  conm 
altari,  ubi  ad  orationem  ae  inclinayerat,  adsisteret,  Leo  papa  coronam 
capiti  eine  impoeoit,  cancto  Romanorom  popalo  adclamante:  Katrolo 
Augusta,  a  Deo  eoroTuUo  magna  et  pac\fieo  imperatari  Bomaiwrum^  vita 
ii  vidoria/  Poet  quae  laudes  ab  eodem  pontifioe  more  antiqiuNram 
principam  adoratoB  eat,  ac  deinde,  omisao  Patricii  nomine,  Impeiator  ei 
Angostns  appeUatna.  —  Einhardi  :  Annalet,  an.  801. 

The  long-abiding  tradition  was  broken  through ;  a  barbarian  received 
the  diadem;  the  Roman  pontiff  spoke  the  words,  the  Boman  people 
echoed  them,  —  "  Karolo  Angnsto,  a  Deo  coronato,  magno  et  pacifieo  Bo- 
manomm  Imperatori,  vita  et  victoria.*'  The  German  was  at  laat  Angaa- 
tns.  —  £.  A.  Frkeman  :  Chief  Periods  of  European  History,  p.  106, 
London  ed.,  1886. 


TUB  BXTRBKB  DEPBXSSSION  AND  FEAB.  26 

actual  and  lasting.^  In  view  of  this  efiPect,  one  need 
not  hoaitate  to  join  in  the  words  which  the  historian 
elsewhere  nses,  which  are  more  emphatic  because  of 
the  temper  of  philosophical  reserre  in  which  he  com- 
monly wrote :  "  No  sovereign,  no  human  being,  perhaps, 
ever  rendered  greater  service  to  the  civilization  of  the 
world."* 

But  the  military  work  of  Charlemagne  was  never  ulti- 
mate in  his  plans.  It  was  designed  to  be  conditional 
and  directly  tributary  to  a  work  of  more  essential  im- 
portance, more  difficult  and  extensive,  in  the  realms 
of  social  and  political  life.  He  convened  national  as- 
semblies, nearly  forty  of  which  are  particularly  enumer- 
ated, meeting  commonly  in  cities  not  far  from  the 
Bhine.  At  these  assemblies  reports  were  received  from 
different  regions ;  inquiries  were  made  as  to  their  tem- 
per, needs,  and  respective  opportunities ;  and  out  of  the 
answers  to  such  inquiries  came  what  are  known  as  the 
^  capitularies, "  or  little  chapters,  of  the  Emperor,  con- 
taining a  multitude  of  what  are  essentially  administra- 
tive rules.  They  constitute,  as  Gibbon  noticed,  rather 
a  series  than  a  system,  while  they  concerned  all  sorts 
of  matters,  as  he  also  sneeringly  observed, —  '^the  cor- 
rection of  abuses,  the  reformation  of  manners,  the  econ- 
omy of  his  [the  Emperor's]  farms,  the  care  of  his  poultry, 

^  Malgr^  ranit^,  malgr^  I'actiyiU  de  aa  pens^  et  de  son  ponvoir,  le 
dterdrs  ^tftit  antour  de  Ini  immense,  invincible :  il  le  r^primait  an  mo- 
ment, ma  nn  point ;  nude  le  mal  r^gnait  partoat  oh  ne  parvenait  paa  aa 
terrible  Tolont^;  et  li  od  eUe  arait  paes^  il  recommenfait  dha  qn'elle 
s'tait  Aoign^.  .  .  .  Aprto  lai,  de  yraies  barri^res  politiques  des  itate 
pine  €fh  moina  bien  oigania^  mais  r^ls  et  durables,  s'el^Fent ;  les  roy- 
aomes  de  Lorraine,  d'Allemagne,  d'ltalie,  dee  denz  Boui^gnes,  de  Navarre, 
datent  de  oetie  ^poqoe.  —  Bitt,  de  la  CivU.  en  France^  torn.  ii.  pp.  129; 
ISl. 

s  Hiatoiy  of  France^  yoL  L  p.  252.    Boston  ed. 


26  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

and  even  the  sale  of  his  eggs. "  ^  But  they  exhibit  the 
first  distinct  attempt  to  revise  and  harmonize  the  laws 
of  the  diverse  peoples  who  had  been  brought  beneath 
his  authority,  and  to  promulgate  salutary  rules  equally 
affecting  separated  regions;  and  some  of  them,  cer- 
tainly, are  marked  not  only  by  civil  wisdom  but  by  a 
governing  Christian  purpose.  The  mind  and  spirit  of 
the  Emperor  appear  in  them  more  distinctly  flian  in 
his  wars. 

Of  the  eleven  hundred  and  fifty  articles  known  to 
Guizot  he  reckoned  eighty-seven  as  being  of  moral 
legislation,  two  hundred  and  seventy-three  of  political, 
one  hundred  and  thirty  of  penal,  one  hundred  and  ten 
of  civil,  eighty-five  of  religious,  three  hundred  and  five 
of  canonical,  seventy-three  of  domestic,  and  twelve  of 
incidental  occasional  rules.'  The  initiative  in  these 
rules  proceeded,  of  course,  always  from  the  Emperor, 

^  Decline  and  Fall,  rol.  ri.  p.  289.    London  ed.,  1848. 

«  See  the  Analytic  Table  in  Gnizot,  '*  Hiat  de  la  CiTil.,"  torn.  iL 
pp.  188-189.  Pariff  ed.  1846.  Inatead  of  the  65  capitnlariea,  with  1,150 
articlea  recognized  by  Ouisot  as  belonging  to  Charlemagne,  Boretina 
(**Capitalaria  Begum  Fiancoram")  computes  them  at  118,  containing 
1,484  articlea.  The  datea  of  many  are  uncertain,  howerer,  though  aome 
which  have  been  attributed  to  following  kinga  may  perhaps  be  mora 
jnatly  ascribed  to  the  grsat  Emperor.  The  originala  hare  for  the  moat 
part  long  disappeared,  and  the  copies  are  widely  scattered. 

Acta  ista  majoris  momenti  in  palatio  regio  schedia  membranaceia  in* 
scripta,  atque  ad  univeraorum  notitiam  aut  in  placito  publico  proposita, 
ant  per  ainguloa  archiepiacopatua  eptacopis,  abbatibua  et  oomitibua  qiui 
popalo  proponerent  tranamissa,  etc  .  .  .  Et  authentica  quidem,  aiTe  pala- 
tina  tare  in  provinciaa  tranamissa,  omnia  fen  perierunt,  ezcepta  acilioet 
aeheda  tenem  membrane  hodie  in  monasterio  S.  PauU  in  Karinthia  auper- 
atite,  et  Riculfi  archiepiscopl  litteris  encycUcia  in  monasterio  £k  QalU 
adaenratia.  At  libri  juris  ecdeaiastici  vd  mundani  quibna  capitnlaria  in- 
acripta  habentnr,  complurea  tam  in  Qermania  et  Italia  quam  in  Qallia  et 
marca  Hiapanica  exarati,  ad  noRtra  usqne  tempers  devenerunt  —  Pbjv. 
Pkrts  :  Mim,  Qtr,  Hid,,  torn.  iiL  p.  zil 


ITS  EXTREME  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAR.  27 

while  to  him  belonged  the  definitive  decision,  though 
an  influence  upon  them  maj  doubtless  have  been  exerted 
by  other  minds. 

To  assist  in  the  administration  of  affairs  under  these 
rules,  and  to  keep  himself  informed  of  what  needed  his 
attention,  Charlemagne  sent  imperial  commissioners 
throughout  his  dominions,  while  he  unweariedlj  trav- 
ersed them  himself,  multiplying  the  impression  in 
every  quarter  of  his  ever-present  and  unlimited  au- 
thority. He  protected  yet  regulated  religion  itself, 
with  a  strong  bent  toward  securing  sincerity  in  its 
teachers,  and  the  useful  effect  of  it  on  the  people.  He 
set  forth  an  improved  Book  of  Homilies  for  use  in  the 
churches.  He  presided  in  synods  and  directed  their 
discussions,  wrote  letters  of  instruction  or  sharp  ad- 
monition to  abbots,  bishops,  on  occasion  to  popes, 
looked  after  religious  establishments,  and  as  far  as 
might  be  controlled  their  manners ;  while  at  the  same 
time  he  sought  diligently  to  stimulate  industry  and 
extend  commerce,  and  undertook  himself  large  public 
works,  as  the  building  of  bridges,  or  the  construction 
of  the  canal  designed  to  connect  the  Rhine  and  the 
Danube.  It  marks  almost  equally  the  character  of  the 
man  and  that  of  his  times  that  one  of  his  capikilaries 
insists  emphatically  on  the  duty  of  hospitality^  that 
another  enjoins  it  on  each  subject  to  govern  himself  by 
the  precepts  of  Qod,  doing  Him  service,  since  the  Em- 
peror cannot  personally  look  after  all;  that  another 
forbids  the  veneration  of  questionable  saints;  another 
proclaims  that  nobody  must  think  that  acceptable 
prayer  can  only  be  offered  in  one  of  three  languages 
[Hebrew,  Latin,  Greek  ?],  since  God  may  be  worthily 
adored  in  any  tongue,  and  whoever  asks  for  right 
things  will  be  heard;  while  still  another  commands 


28  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

that  preaching  be  always  of  a  sort  which  plain  people 
can  understand. 

In  manifold  ways  the  great  Emperor  vigorously  ad- 
vanced the  interests  of  learning.  Though  not  perhaps 
able  to  write  himself,  certainly  not  with  ease  and  skill, 
having  acquired  the  art  too  late  in  life,^  he  undoubtedly 
read  and  spoke  Latin  and  understood  Greek,  and  he 
showed  with  constant  stress  his  regard  for  good  letters. 
He  founded  many  schools,  especially  in  connection  with 
convents  or  cathedrals,  and  enjoined  that  in  them  no 
distinction  be  made  between  the  son  of  the  free-bom 
and  the  son  of  the  serf.  He  caused  to  be  made  the  first 
grammar  of  the  common  dialect,  with  the  first  collection 
of  German  songs,  reciting  heroic  German  deeds.*  He 
cultivated  the  arts,  especially  those  of  architecture  and 

1  The  words  of  Einliard  [Eginhard]  aeem  dodriTe  as  to  the  Empeioi^s 
inability  to  write,  —  except  slowly,  with  difficulty :  Nee  patrio  tantom 
sermone  oontentos,  etiam  per^grinis  linguis  ediscendlB  operam  impendlt. 
In  qnibns  Latinam  ita  didicit,  at  eqne  ilia  ac  patria  lingoa  orate  sit  BoIi« 
tns  ;  Qnecam  rero  melins  intellegere  quam  pronuntiara  poterat  .  .  .  Dia* 
cebat  aitem  compntandi  et  intentione  sagaci  sidemm  cnrsnm  cnriosiarima 
rimafaator.  Temptabat  et  scribere  tabnlasque  et  codicellos  ad  hoc  in  lecto 
sub  cerricalibas  circumferre  solebat,  ut,  cum  vacuum  tempus  esset^  ma* 
nam  litteris  efflgiendia  adsueaceret.  8ed  param  aucceasit  labor  prApoa- 
terua  ac  aero  inchoatns.  —  Einhardi  :   Fikt  Karoli  M.,  cap.  26. 

Ampere,  howerer,  belieyes  this  to  apply  only  to  the  finer  and  more 
difficult  style  of  writing  practised  by  skilled  copyists  :  '' Je  croii  qu*il  est 
question  ici,  non  de  la  simple  Venture,  mais  de  la  calligraphie."  (Hist. 
Litt.  sous  OharL,  p.  86,  IViris  ed.,  1870.)  In  the  Convent  Library  of  the 
Abbey  of  St.  Qall,  near  (Constance,  — perhaps  the  moat  famoua  achool  in 
Europe  in  the  ninth  and  tenth  centnriea,  —  are  preaerved  what  purport  to 
be  tableta  on  which  he  wrote  his  difficnlt  oopiea,  the  tableta  being  en- 
cloaed  in  iroiy,  elaborately  carved,  and  aet  in  metallic  framea  encrusted 
with  precious  stones.  Some  marginal  notes,  said  to  be  by  him,  are  also 
on  a  Paalter  in  the  Imperial  Library  at  Vienna. 

*  Omnium  tamen  nationum  qu»  sub  eius  dominatu  erant  jura  qnm 
scripts  non  erant  deacribere  ac  litteris  mandari  fecit  Item  barbara  et  an- 
tiquiasima  oarmina,  quibus  veterum  regum  actus  ac  bella  canebantnrt 


ITS  BXTRESME  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAR.  29 

music.  It  was  by  him  that  the  Gregorian  chant  was 
introduced  into  central  Europe,  in  place  of  the  Am* 
brosian  which  had  preceded  it,  and  which  only  slowly 
gave  way  before  it  Through  his  effort,  and  especially 
by  the  schools  of  music  established  by  him,  the  churches 
became  possessed  of  a  richer  ecclesiastical  song,  and  to 
him  we  are  indebted  for  an  effect  in  this  direction  which 
has  not  ceased.^ 

Especially  he  sought  to  gather  around  himself  men 
of  fine  parts  and  of  eminent  learning,  that  he  might  be 
instructed  and  the  mind  of  his  empire  be  enriched.  So 
he  brought  Alcuin  from  England,  Peter  of  Pisa  and 
Paulus  Diaconus  from  Italy,  and  associated  with  them 
Angilbert,  Adalhard,  Th^odulf,  and  others,  thus  form- 
ing the  ^^  School  of  the  Palace, "  in  which  all  the  leam- 

acripaity  memorinqae  mandavit.  Inchoayit  et  grammaticam  patrii  atr- 
monia.  —  FUa  Kar,  M.,  cap.  29. 

Ampire'a  comment  on  these  efforts  of  the  great  Emperor  is  certainly  a 
jnsi  one  :  *'  Cette  id^  de  fairs  la  grammaire  d'un  idiome  r6pat^  barbare, 
montre  la  anp^riorit^  d*un  esprit  qui  ne  se  laisaait  pas  fasciner  par  le 
m^te  des  Umgues  d'antiqnit^,  an  point  de  ne  pas  oomprendre  qne  sa 
laogne  materneUe  poayait  dtre  caltivee.  ...  On  a  vn  qu'il  fit  recoeOlir  de 
▼ienz  chants  nationanx ;  or,  il  fallait,  ponr  conceyoir  nne  telle  pens^e, 
one  grande  hanteor  et  nne  grande  liberty  d'esprit."  —  Eia^  IM,  aoui 
Charl.^  p.  88.    Paris  ed.,  1870. 

>  Parmi  les  enseignemens  que  Charles  prit  k  tftche  d'introdnire  d'ltaUe 
en  France,  U  mettoit  beanconp  de  priz  k  lamusiqne  de  TJ^gliae.  C'^toitnne 
cona^quence  de  son  z^le  religienz.  L'^lise  gallicane  et  germaniqne  de- 
menvolt  attach^  an  chant  ambrosien,  de  pr6f<6rence  an  chant  gr^rien 
adopts  k  Some.  .  .  .  Mais  Charles  leur  imposa  silence  en  lenr  &iRant 
obserYsr  qne  Tean  d'nne  riviere  ^toit  pins  pure  k  sa  source  qae  dans  les 
'casanz  qui  en  aont  d^riv^,  et  que  Rome  ^tant  la  source  de  tonte  sagesse 
divine^  il  talloit  reformer  le  rite  gallican  sur  le  rite  remain.  B  se  fit  en- 
aaila  donner  par  Adrian  deux  midtres  de  chant ;  il  en  garda  nn  pour  sa 
chapelle,  qn'il  conduisit  avec  lui  de  province  en  province  ;  il  voulnt  qne 
Taatrs  At  stationnaire  k  Metx,  afin  d'y  fonder,  pour  tonte  la  France,  nne 
^eole  de  chant  accUsiastique.  —  Sismokdi:  JSiaL  des  Fran^Uf  tom.  ii. 
pp.8a9-«S8.    Paris  ed.,  1821. 


80  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

ing  of  the  time  was  designed  to  be  represented,  and  in 
which  he  with  his  household  became  scholars.  He  col- 
lected also  a  library,  limited,  of  course,  in  the  number 
of  its  manuscripts,  but  for  the  time  costly  and  precioufL 
He  studied  rhetoric  for  himself,  with  mathematics  and 
astronomy,  was  conversant  with  the  sacred  writings,  and 
read  Augustine  with  delight,  especially  the  "De  Civi- 
tate  Dei. "  The  French  language  took  strong  impulse 
to  development  in  his  time,  the  earliest  written  exhibi- 
tion of  which  is  found  by  historians  in  the  oath  taken 
by  Louis  of  Germany  toward  Charles  the  Bald,  a.  d.  842. 
Even  Gibbon  admits,  who  is  usually  frigid  and  un- 
friendly toward  the  Emperor,  that  his  '^  encouragement 
of  learning  reflects  the  purest  and  most  pleasing  lustre 
on  the  character  of  Charlemagne. ''  ^ 

Not  France  alone,  or  Germany,  took  impression  from 
this  extraordinary  man.  He  largely  influenced  Eng- 
land, while  he  towered  over  the  Continent  as  Mont  Blanc 
over  the  lesser  peaks  and  ridges  rising  around  it  It  has 
been  supposed  to  be  in  remembrance  of  him  that  long 
after  his  death  the  epithet  ^'  Magnus, "  incorporate  with 
his  name,  continued  a  frequent  individual  designation 
in  the  far  Scandinavia.  The  East  as  well  as  the  West 
honored  his  pre-eminence;   and  Haroun  Al  Baschid, 

1  Decline  and  Fall,  vL  241. 

Oatonam's  testimony  is  more  joetly  emphatic :  — 

Dans  ce  long  r^e  de  Charlemagne,  U  faut  admirer  bien  moina  la  foroe 
de  son  ^p^  que  celle  de  see  conyiotions.  .  .  .  Ce  conqu^rant,  ce  l^gisla* 
tenr,  ce  sonyerain  de  vingt  peoples  mat  unis,  est  possid^  de  la  cnrioaitA 
qui  trouble  le  sommeil  des  savants.  An  moment  oil  il  ^meat  toat  FOcoidttit 
da  bruit  de  ses  premieres  victoires,  il  reprend  en  soas-CBUvre  see  Etudes  in- 
completes. .  .  .  Ce  sont  les  occupations,  non  d*an  sopluste  conronn^ 
inaccessible  auz  affaires  comme  les  empereors  de  Constantinople,  mais  da 
plus  actif  des  hommes,  qui  mit  Bn  k  cinquante-troiB  expMitions  miUtaire% 
et  qui  chaque  annee  tenait  en  i)er8onno  Res  plaids  g^n^raux.  —  A.  F«  O&a- 
NAM  :  La  OvHl.  Chre,  ekez  Us  Frcmes,  pp.  625-626.     Paris,  1872. 


ITS  EXTBElfE  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAR.  81 

lord  of  Asia  from  Africa  to  India,  sent  ambassadors  to 
him  from  his  own  magnificent  capital  of  Bagdad,  with 
presents  of  silken  tents,  an  elephant,  a  water-clock,  and 
the  keys  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  ^  When  he  was  buried 
in  the  basilica  reared  by  himself  at  Aix-Ia-Ghapelle,  in 
A.  D.  814,  still  seated  in  death  on  a  royal  throne  and 
arrayed  in  magnificent  imperial  robes,  the  universal 
feeling  of  Europe  exalted  him  above  all  preceding 
monarchs.  In  spite  of  his  personal  frailties  and  sins 
the  monks  had  visions  of  him  ascending  the  shining 
golden  stairs,  attended  by  angels,  to  be  welcomed  by 
the  Lord.  When  he  was  canonized,  first  by  the  Anti- 
Pope,  Paschal  Third,  three  and  a  half  centuries  later, 
A.  D.  1166,  and  subsequently  by  Alexander  Third,  it  was 
in  deference  to  this  wide,  persistent,  controlling  im- 
pulse* Louis  Ninth  appointed  an  annual  feast-day  to 
commemorate  him  with  triumphant  and  solemn  ser- 
vice ;  and  we,  looking  back  with  merely  critical  inter- 
est on  his  times  and  his  career,  can  see  that  in  an 
important  sense  it  is  true, — if  he  had  been  followed  by 
others  equal  to  himself  it  would  have  been  in  every 
sense  true, —  what  an  eloquent  and  judicious  writer  on 
the  Boman  Empire  has  recently  said,  that  from  the  mo* 
mentof  his  imperial  coronation  modern  history  begins.* 

1  EiiilMvdi :  Vita,  16.  —  The  particalar  description  of  the  clock,  given  by 
^nlwid,  or  at  least  l^  the  author  of  the  Annals,  is  worth  quoting  for  a 
light  which  it  casts  on  the  history  of  mechanical  art :  Fuemnt  praterea 
immeim  pnefati  r^gis  .  .  .  necnon  et  horologium  ex  auricalco  arte  me- 
ehaniea  mirifice  compositani,  in  quo  dnodecim  horarum  cursus  ad  clep- 
sdnm  Teitebatur,  cum  totidem  areis  pilulis,  que  ad  oompletionem 
lioraTani  deddebant,  et  casn  suo  subjectum  sibi  cimbelum  tinnire  facie- 
bant,  additis  in  eodem  ejnadem  numeri  equitibus,  qui  per  duodecim 
fenaotras  oompletis  horis  exiebant,  et  impnlsu  egressionis  sua  totidem 
feneatfaa,  que  prins  erant  apertie,  clandebant ;  necnon  et  alia  multa  erant 
in  ipso  horolqgio,  qii»  nunc  enumerare  longum  est.  — Annaiea,  an.  807. 

*  Biyce,  The  Holy  Roman  Empire,  p.  49.     London  ed.,  1876. 


82  THE  TENTH  CBNTC7BT: 

It  is  an  old  tradition  on  the  Rhine  that  Charlemagne, 
looking  from  the  windows  of  his  palace  at  Ingelheim 
only  scanty  ruins  of  which  now  can  be  traced,  observed 
that  the  snows  melted  first  and  the  spring  verdure  ear- 
liest appeared  on  a  particular  summit  across  the  river. 
"There,  then,"  he  said,  "we  will  plant  our  vineyards;  ** 
and  from  that  day  to  this  the  vines  and  the  wines  of  the 
Riidesheimer  Berg  have  been  famous  in  the  world.  The 
schools  which  he  founded,  with  the  Christian  institu- 
tions which  he  quickened  and  regulated,  marked  the 
first  outbreak  of  the  spring-time  in  Europe  after  a  tem- 
pestuous winter ;  and  if  bitter  frosts  had  not  afterward 
blighted  the  blossoming  promise  the  Continent  would 
have  been  filled,  earlier  than  it  was,  with  gladness  and 
strength.  The  hope  which  he  inspired  never  wholly 
passed  away.  It  was  the  one  power  for  good  which 
subsequent  disasters  could  not  crush.  A  demonstra- 
tion had  been  given,  on  a  really  colossal  scale,  of  what 
was  possible  in  European  advancement.  Something  of 
this  was  still  remembered  amid  the  agony  of  darkness 
which  followed.  And  I  have  referred  so  particularly  to 
this  reign  of  Charlemagne,  not  merely  because  it  formed 
in  itseU  an  astonishing  parenthesis  in  history,  but  be- 
cause it  was  this,  fundamentally,  which  made  possible 
the  career  of  a  man  like  Bernard  three  centuries  later. 
Those  intervening  centuries,  however,  were  full  of  such 
a  frightful  chaos  in  Church  and  State  as  has  never  since 
been  equalled  or  approached. 

Louis,  the  son  of  Charlemagne,  who  before  his  father's 
death  had  received  the  diadem  from  his  hand,  retained 
nominally  the  same  empire;  but  the  regnant  and  un-* 
resting  enei^  which  before  had  filled  its  indefinite 
spaces  being  withdrawn,  the  fabric  soon  fell  in  bloody 
dissolution.     Among  the  sons  of  Louis  it  was  divided 


TIB  BXTBEMB  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAB*  88 

by  compact^  you  remember,  after  fierce  conflicts. 
Through  the  failure  of  collateral  branches,  it  was 
nominally  and  partially  restored,  toward  the  close  of 
the  century,  under  Charles  the  Fat^  the  most  wretched 
of  caricatures  upon  Charles  the  Great.  When  he  had 
been  deposed,  for  cowardice  and  fatuity,  in  a.d.  887, 
and  after  begging  his  bread  from  the  rebels  had  died 
in  lonely  and  abject  misery,  and  been  buried  in  a  con- 
vent grave,  ^  all  semblance  vanished  of  the  former 
coherent  empire,  to  reappear  only  after  the  lapse  of 
three  fourths  of  a  century,  under  the  plan  and  by  the 
prowess  of  the  German  Otlia 

With  the  failure  of  the  Empire,  the  grand  and  saga- 
cious plan  of  Charlemagne,  who  had  sought  and  for  the 
time  had  secured  the  territorial  protection  and  govern- 
mental unity  of  a  large  part  of  Europe,  found  tremen- 
dous vindication.  It  became  apparent  that  the  Empire 
had  not  simply  originated  in  personal  ambition,  though 
that  of  course  had  had  its  part  in  rearing  the  vast  but 
temporary  structure.  It  had  had  also  a  vital  relation 
to  the  needs  of  the  time ;  so  that  when  it  was  gone  the 
threatening  forces  against  which  it  had  raised  a  tem- 
porary bulwark  broke  forth  upon  its  lands  with  fear- 
fully wide  and  destroying  violence.  The  interests  to 
which  it  had  given  a  transient  guarantee  were  exposed 
thereafter,  without  protection,  to  the  perils  which  it 
had  limited  or  arrested ;  and  the  future,  of  which  a  real 
promise  had  lain  in  it,  proved  impossible  to  be  reached 
except  through  winding  and  bloody  patiis.  Barbarism 
rushed  in  fnun  every  side  on  the  feeble  beginnings  of 
the  better  civilization.  Learning  ceased  to  be  cherished, 
and  the  liberal  arts  which  were  beginning  to  germinate 


^  At  Bfffliipy*^  now  Cooittnot. 
S 


S4  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

wiiftiered  like  flowers  in  icy  airs.  Even  Charlemagne's 
collection  of  German  heroic  songs  is  said  to  have  been 
destroyed  as  impious  by  his  successors.  The  schools 
established  for  popular  training  were  almost  as  hope- 
lessly scattered  as  was  the  School  of  the  Palace.  Armed 
enemies  burst  with  a  fury  unrestrained  upon  the  dis- 
tributed nascent  states,  which  had  no  longer  strength  to 
resist  them.  The  African  Saracens  pillaged  the  coasts 
of  the  Mediterranean;  they  plundered  Aries  and  Mar- 
seilles ;  they  ravc^d  Corsica  and  Sardinia ;  they  sacked 
and  burned  the  monastery  of  Montcf  Cassino,  the  cradle 
of  monachism  in  Europe ;  they  burned  Ostia  and  Civita 
Yecchia,  and  threatened  Rome,  so  that  Leo  Fourth,  in 
the  middle  of  the  ninth  century,  built  a  wall  to  protect 
the  quarter  of  the  city  around  St.  Peter's,  which  is  still 
called  from  him  the  Leonine  city.  He  built,  also,  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Tiber,  fortified  towers,  from  one  to  the 
other  of  which  chains  were  stretched  to  prevent  ihe 
passage  of  piratical  flotillas. 

At  the  same  time  the  Northmen,  the  sight  of  whose 
swift  and  daring  ships  in  Mediterranean  harbors  had 
startled  Charlemagne  at  the  height  of  his  power,  and 
against  whom  armed  vessels  had  been  stationed  at  ihe 
mouths  of  French  rivers,  breaking  forth  from  ihe  popu- 
lous Scandinavian  coasts  pierced  into  France,  up  ihe 
Rhine  into  Germany,  despoiling  and  slaying  on  every 
side.  In  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  nearly  fifty  in- 
cursions of  the  Northmen  into  France  are  historically 
recorded.  Where  the  records  are  less  frequent  it  is 
not  improbably  because  convents  had  been  destroyed^ 
monks  had  fled,  and  their  painful  recitals  had  turned 
to  ashes.  The  relentless  ravagers  pillaged  Bordeaux 
so  thoroughly  that  the  archbishop  was  transferred  by 
the  Pope  to  Bourges,  because  his  province  had  become 


ITS  EXTBEMJB  DEPBESSIOK  AND   FEAB.  85 

«  desert^  They  were  at  Amiensy  Gambrai,  Rouen, 
Lidge,  at  Orleans,  Tours,  Toulouse,  Nantes,  at  Treves, 
Gologne,  Bonn,  and  stabled  their  horses  in  the  basilica 
at  Aiz.  Ghartres  fell  into  their  possession.  Naples, 
Sicily,  and  the  Greek  coasts  were  visited  by  their  fierce 
rapacity ;  and  before  the  death  of  Gharles  the  Fat  they 
had  laid  siege  to  Paris, — then  limited  again  to  the 
island  in  the  Seine, —  and  had  been  not  beaten  off  but 
bought  Oiff,  with  a  large  money  ransom  and  a  free  pas- 
sage on  the  upper  Seine,  and  into  Burgundy*  For 
nearly  a  century  France  continued  to  be  devastated  by 
them,  till  the  wealthy  province  of  Normandy  having 
become  theirs  by  cession  from  the  crown,  a.  d.  911,  their 
destroying  irruptions  were  suspended.  ^^  From  the  fury 
of  the  Normans,  Good  Lord,  deliver  us, ''  had  become  a 
familiar  petition  of  worshippers  in  the  North  of  Europe, 
as  a  similar  prayer  against  the  deadly  arrows  of  the 
Hungarians  had  found  place  in  the  South. 

The  ravages  of  the  Hungarians  had  been  yet  more 
dreadful  than  those  of  the  Normans ;  and  the  memory  of 
them  still  links  itself,  in  a  lurid  association,  with  the 
national  name  so  nobly  represented  in  our  time  by 
Kossuth,  Defik,  and  Andrfissy.  Gomposed  of  tribes  of 
Scythian  and  Finnish  origin,  this  people,  with  tents  of 
akin,  garments  of  fur,  with  scarified  faces,  and  with  the 
terrible  Tartar  bows  which  were  their  characteristic 
weapons, — though  they  used  as  well  the  sword,  the 
spear,  the  battle-axe,  and  the  breastplate, —  migrating 
from  the  East,  had  broken  into  the  parts  of  Fannonia 
which  Charlemagne  had  subdued,  and  from  thence  at 
the  close  of  the  ninth  century  they  swept  like  a  whirl- 
wind over  Europe.  ^'  Such  was  their  Scythian  speed, " 
says  Gibbon,  ^  that  in  a  single  day  a  circuit  of  fifty  miles 

^  Sismondiy  Hist  des  Franyais,  torn.  iii.  p.  210. 


86  THE  TENTH  OBNT0BY: 

was  stripped  and  consumed;  •  .  .  nor  could  my  dis« 
tance  be  secure  against  an  enemy  who,  almost  at  the 
same  moment,  laid  in  ashes  the  Helvetian  monastery  of 
St.  GkkU  and  the  city  of  Bremen  on  the  shores  of  the 
Northern  Ocean."  ^  Then  began  the  multiplication  ot 
walled  towns  in  Europe.  Over  the  southern  provinces 
of  France  rolled  unchecked  the  horrible  flood.  Gross- 
ing the  Pyrenees,  it  broke  into  Spain.  Italy  was 
swept  by  it  The  royal  Pavia  was  burned,  and  almost 
its  whole  population  was  slain.  To  the  bounds  of 
Calabria  the  desolation  extended.  The  savage  invaders 
showed  no  mercy,  as  they  asked  none.  Even  canni- 
balism was  attributed  to  them  by  the  popular  rumor. 
Their  business  was  to  slay  every  man ;  and  if  they  spared 
women  or  children  it  was  only  to  drag  them  into  a  cap- 
tivity in  the  prospect  of  which  death  lost  its  terrora 
For  nearly  forty  years  such  raids  of  savage  massacre 
continued,  till  the  power  of  these  enemies  of  all  civiliza- 
tion was  finally  broken  in  great  battles  under  Henry  the 
Fowler  and  Otho.  Afterward  they  subsided  by  slow 
degrees  into  stationary  life ;  but  up  to  nearly  the  last 
quarter  of  the  tenth  century  the  terror  of  the  Hungarians 
was  hardly  for  a  day  absent  from  the  mind  of  Europe. 

Meantime  the  Slavonic  Wends  and  Ozechs  had  re- 
nounced dependence  on  the  Empire,  and  threatened  its 
frontiers.  All  Europe  was  menaced  with  a  swift  and 
awful  return  of  barbarism.  Fear  was  so  general  and 
so  oppressive  that  a  dreadful  apathy  was  born  of  it,  an 
apathy  which  tended  to  social  and  governmental  atro- 
phy, and  was  only  interrupted  by  disaster  and  convul- 
sion. Population  diminished;  and  the  remark  of  Sis- 
mondi  is  literally  true  that  in  reading  the  scanty  records 

1  DacUne  and  Fall,  toI.  yii.  p.  171.     London  ed.,  1848. 


ITS  BXTBBICB  DEPBSSSION  AND  PRAB.  87 

one  ]R  stmck  by  a  prevailing  feeling  of  solituda^  Har- 
Tests  were  neglected,  forests  widened.  Aquitaine  was 
ravaged  by  wolves.  As  Michelet  has  said,  herds  of  deer 
seemed  to  have  taken  possession  of  France.*  As  nearly 
as  is  possible,  perhaps,  in  extended  hnman  societies,  a 
state  of  general  anarchy  was  approached.  Bryce  has 
described  it  well  in  a  few  words :  ^^  No  one  thought  of 
common  defence  or  wide  organization ;  the  strong  built 
castles,  the  weak  became  their  bondsmen,  or  took  shelter 
under  the  cowl.  .  .  .  The  grand  vision  of  a  universal 
Christian  empire  was  utterly  lost  in  the  isolation,  the 
antagonism,  the  increasing  localization  of  all  powers; 
it  might  seem  to  have  been  but  a  passing  gleam  from 
an  older  and  a  better  world. '' ' 

It  was  in  this  dreary  and  dangerous  period  that  the 
Feudal  System  came,  with  an  almost  spontaneous  and 
irresistible  impulse,  to  wide  development ;  and  perhaps 
nothing  illustrates  more  clearly  both  the  needs  of  the 
time  and  the  slavish  or  tyrannous  temper  presiding  in 
it.  Undoubtedly,  the  beginnings  of  this  celebrated  sys- 
tem may  be  traced  further  back,  even  to  the  primitive 
customs  of  Germanic  and  GMli^  tribes.  But  it  was 
finally  articulated  and  firmly  established  only  in  and 
after  the  tenth  century.  The  edict  of  Conrad  Second  at 
Milan,  which  is  generally  recognized  as  marking  the  full 
maturity  of  the  system,  was  issued  in  a.d.  1087,  when 
the  organization  of  feudal  servitudes  became  complete. 

'  L'oztiDOtion  npide  de  la  popuUtion  rorale  fiit  la  grande  cause  qui, 
■ooi  le  i^gne  dea  Oailoviiigieiis,  ooTiit  rempin  anx  brigands  qui  la  d^vaa* 
tknnt;  ...  en  llsant  lear  r6cit  dee  ^r^emena,  il  eat  impoeeible  de  n'ttiw 
pas  atteint  d'an  sentiment  de  soUtade.  —  HiiL  d$  Frany^U,  torn.  ilL  pi 

879. 

^  Les  bdtes  faaves  semblaient  prendre  possession  de  la  France,  ^-ifiil 
4e  Promote  torn.  L  p.  897.    Paris  ed.,  1885. 

*  Holy  Bomaa  Empire,  pi  79.    London  ed.,  1878. 


88  THB  TENTH  CIBNTUHT : 

The  earliest  written  ^  cuBtomarj,  '*  as  it  was  called,  or 
public  code  of  feudal  customs,  was  issued  in  France  in 
A.D.  1088.^  But  the  customs  had  many  of  them  become 
established  before,  of  which  this  list  presents  the  record ; 
and  the  fact  that  the  vast  elaborated  system,  whose  in- 
flnence  was  so  wide  both  for  evil  and  for  good,  came 
into  development  at  that  time,  throws  a  vivid  light  both 
on  its  own  nature  and  on  those  public  dangers  and  needs 
out  of  which  it  arose.  In  studying  it  one  is  apt  to  get 
entangled  in  the  teasing  intricacies  of  its  ultimate  ar- 
rangements, and  the  multiplicity  of  its  correlated  *^  in* 
cidents. "  But  the  principle  of  it  was  utterly  simple. 
The  reciprocal  obligation  of  protection  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  service  on  the  other,  was  its  one  essential 
element. 

In  ethical  origin  it  was  a  military  compact,  express 
or  implied,  between  lord  and  vassal,  for  their  common 
defence.  After  a  time  it  came  to  be  held  that  every  man 
not  noble  by  birth  was  bound  to  attach  himself  to  some 
special  lord ;  and  so  the  smaller  free  estates,  or  allodial 
lands,  came  under  the  feudal  proprietorship,  with  the 
military  protection,  usually  of  the  nearest  and  most 
powerful  baron.  Then  the  benefices,  which  had  been 
royally  conferred  on  principal  nobles^  making  them  gov- 
ernors in  their  provinces  on  condition  of  military  ser- 
vice, became  hereditary,  constituting  fiefs,  at  the  head 
of  which  was  duke,  count,  or  marquis.  On  the  one 
hand  arose  out  of  this  the  landed  aristocracy,  which 
has  formed  so  striking  a  feature  in  the  political  system 
of  Europe.  On  the  other  hand  came  the  hereditary 
military  aristocracy,  which  allowed  no  nobld  to  exer- 
cise another  trade  than  that  of  arms  without  ^  derogat- 

1  See  Hallam.  The  Middle  Agui,  ToL  i.  pp.  165,  18a    London  ed., 

185a 


ITS  BZTBSMB  DEPBE8SI0N  AND  FBAB.  89 

iskgj "  or  Burrendering  the  advantages  of  birth  and  rank* 
The  land  was  held  to  ennoble  its  possessor;  and  sur- 
names became  common,  to  facilitate  the  tracing  and 
the  transmission  of  property  and  prerogatiye.  For  the 
same  purpose  armorial  bearings  were  introduced,  es- 
pecially in  the  eleyenth  and  twelfth  centuries.  Even 
the  higher  clergy  often  became  feudal  nobles,  and  were 
engaged  in  actual  war,  though  they  might  commonly 
discharge  their  feudal  obligation  by  sending  their  vas- 
sals to  the  field,  or  by  pecuniary  equivalents;  while 
those  who  in  an  earlier  time  had  been  free  peasants 
came  by  degrees,  under  a  force  as  inevitable  as  that 
which  governs  the  flow  of  rivers,  to  be  the  bondsmen 
of  the  lords. 

The  whole  system  was  an  attempt,  artificial,  elabo- 
rate, yet  at  first  almost  without  foresight  of  results,  to 
organize  feeble  dispersed  communities  for  mutual  pro- 
tection and  local  defence.  It  shows,  in  every  part,  that 
the  safeguards  of  the  Empire  had  been  withdrawn.  A 
wide  and  fruitful  social  development  had  been  at  least 
possible,  at  no  distant  day,  if  these  had  continued ;  and 
a  large  measure  of  regulated  liberty  would  almost 
certainly  have  either  attended  or  followed  social  pro- 
gress. But  when  the  empire  disappeared,  and  the 
distributed  populations  broke  up  into  multitudes  of 
separated  circles,  the  State  was  forgotten,  the  neigh- 
borhood became  paramount,  and  the  strongest  was  the 
natoral  chiel  Voltaire  put  into  few  words  the  whole 
genius  of  the  system,  when  he  said  that  ^^each  castle 
became  the  capital  of  a  small  kingdom  of  brigands,  in 
the  midst  of  desolate  towns  and  depopulated  fields. "  ^ 

>  Chaqiie  cbftteaa  ^tait  la  capitale  d'on  petit  ^tat  de  brigands ;  ...  lea 
vilka  preaqne  riduites  en  solitude,  et  les  campagnes  dipeaplte  par  de 
loDguea  famines.  — £mai  mtr  Um  MoBun,  cap.  xzxviiL 


40  THE  TENTH  GENTUBT*. 

There  was  no  longer  any  recognized  commonwealtlL 
The  conception  of  it  appeared  an  illusorj  dream  of  the 
world's  youth  which  the  hard  necessities  of  life  had 
driven  from  men's  minds,  while  they  hastened  to  shelter 
themselves,  in  frightened  squads,  upon  or  beneath  the 
fortressed  rocks.  All  laws  became  provincial  or  local. 
The  emperor  had  been  the  ^  Lex  Animata, " —  the  living 
and  personal  law  of  his  realm.  Now  that  counts  or 
dukes  had  become  local  sovereigns,  subject  only  to  the 
feudal  authority  of  the  king  which  was  often  but  nomi- 
nal, there  was  no  more  attempt  at  general  legislation  or 
a  system  of  public  jurisprudence.  Such  an  attempt  first 
appears  in  an  ordinance  of  Louis  Eighth,  a.d.  1228,  con- 
cerning usury  by  the  Jews.^  Until  then,  and  practi- 
cally until  many  years  later,  no  feudal  tenant  could 
be  bound  by  a  general  law  within  the  limits  of  his  fief 
without  his  consent ;  and  the  multitudes  of  local  regu- 
lations, appertaining  to  the  various  districts,  sprang 
up  almost  as  rapidly  and  as  widely  as  did  the  subse- 
quent millions  of  poppies  on  the  battle-fields  of  France, 
out  of  a  soil  crimsoned  and  fertilized  by  the  down-pour 
of  blood. 

Undoubtedly  the  system  had  certain  advantages,  and 
was  not  entirely  unproductive  of  benefit.  It  at  least 
saved  Europe  from  being  conquereds^.and  possessed  by 
any  one  family  of  kings, — the  multiplication  of  mili- 
tary centres  and  of  local  commanders  making  this  im- 
possible. It  nurtured  certain  elements  of  cjiaracter 
which  claim  our  respect,  as  fealty  to  superiors,  loyalty 
to  custom,  a  sense  of  obligation  to  proximate  authority; 
while  by  giving  supremacy  to  local  interests  it  doubt- 
less wrought  for  the  wider  distribution  of  influences  and 
tendencies  out  of  which  came  the  following  civilization. 

^  HidlMD,  Middle  Ages,  voL  L  p.  Sm.    London  ed.,  186S. 


ITS  EXTREME  DEPRESSION  AKD  FEAB.  41 

Very  few  things  in  this  world  are  of  unmixed  evilness, 
and  the  Feudal  System  was  not  one  of  them.  But^  on  the 
other  hand,  by  narrowing  men's  views  to  their  private 
security,  or  the  protection  of  immediate  neighborhoods, 
it  tended  more  and  more  to  dissociate  communities.  It 
gave  enormous  prominence  to  mere  physical  force.  Its 
nobles,  as  Sismondi  has  said,  ^exercising  the  bcnly 
without  intermission,  found  it  impossible  to  cultivate 
the  mind,  and  came  to  count  it  a  duty  not  to  think. "  ^ 
Genius  and  character  ceased  to  be  conditions  of  influ- 
ence. Only  the  ownership  of  land  gave  authority ;  and 
that  ownership  depended  either  on  birth  or  on  stiffness  of 
muscle.  Private  wars  became  frequent  and  legal,  and 
out  of  them  easily  and  widely  emerged  promiscuous 
rapine.  Commerce  died  under  the  system,  except  as  it 
was  concentrated  and  entrenched  in  powerful  cities; 
and  the  popular  industries,  arts,  and  culture,  which 
commerce  would  have  fostered,  were  fettered  or  for- 
bidden. The  true  relation  of  man  to  the  planet  was 
practically  reversed.  The  land  became  the  lord,  the 
vassal  was  bound  to  it,  and  the  haughtiest  baron  must 
^  serve  his  fief. " '  Anything  approaching  public  sen- 
timent was  of  course  impossible.  No  passion  of  pa- 
triotism could  be  known.  The  system  was  radically 
unserviceable  for  public  advancement,  and  whatever  of 
this  was  accomplished  while  it  continued  was  accom- 
plished in  spite  of  it,  by  energetic  forces  in  human  na- 
ture which  it  could  not  destroy  or  wholly  confine.  It 
was  ethically  commended  to  those  among  whom  it  ex- 
isted, it  is  now  so  commended  to  us,  only  by  its  fitness 
to  guard  Europe  from  the  utter  and  irretrievable  an- 
archy which  without  it  must  have  succeeded  the  shat- 

^  Hist,  des  Fnnfau^  torn.  iv.  p.  116. 

'  Hiobelety  Hist,  de  Fnnce,  torn.  iL  p.  164.    Parii  ad.,  18SS. 


42  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

tered  Empire.  No  other  testimony  appears  to  me  so 
impressive  to  the  awful  evil  and  peril  of  the  time  —  no 
song  or  story,  no  record  or  legend,  no  particular  event, 
no  special  law  —  as  does  the  fact  that  this  enormous 
and  oppressive  establishment  was  the  only  barrier  which 
Europe  could  raise  against  barbarism  and  paganism 
when  Charlemagne's  plans  had  failed  of  success.  Those 
castles  on  the  crags,  with  moats,  drawbridges,  frown- 
ing bastions,  menacing  banners,  and  with  the  small 
huddles  of  huts  grouped  around  their  rocky  founda- 
tions, where  terrified  peasants  found  a  partial  security, 
and  paid  for  it  by  submissive  or  compulsory  compliance 
with  oppressive  exactions, — these  attest  not  so  much 
the  cruelty  of  society,  or  its  ambitions,  as  its  fears. 
The  shield  of  the  Empire  being  withdrawn,  only  iso- 
lated rocks,  guarded  by  men  with  lances  and  in  mail, 
could  take  its  place.  No  other  asylum  was  really  left^* 
unless  men  sought  it  under  the  cowl. 

It  is  to  be  remembered,  also,  that  with  such  changes 
in  the  political  and  military  system  of  Europe  came  at 
the  same  time  a  frightful  development  in  the  sphere  ci 
religion, —  one  which  cannot  be  clearly  understood  ex- 
cept in  connection  with  the  preceding  facts. 

The  World-empire  had  naturally  had  the  World- 
religion  associated  with  it,  and  had  promised  to  be  of 
that  religion  the  sure  protector,  if  also  sometimes  its 
salutary  monitor.  The  capitularies  of  Charlemagne 
had  not  sought  merely  to  revise  and  supplement,  and 
to  bring  into  measurable  order  and  harmony,  the  rules 
and  customs  of  the  various  peoples  subjected  to  his  rule ; 
they  had  contemplated  also,  as  I  indicated  before,  the 
continuance,  the  support,  with  the  practical  and  almost 
the  doctrinal  guidance  of  the  ministers  of  religion. 
They  contain  articles,  for  example,  on  the  admission 


ITB  EXTREME  DEPBE88ION  AND  FEAB.  48 

of  freedmen  into  the  spiritual '  order,  and  of  slaves 
into  monasteries ;  on  the  participation  of  the  clergy  in 
war ;  on  the  treatment  of  tiiose  sentenced  to  death,  who 
should  seek  refuge  in  abbeys ;  on  the  value  of  external 
worics ;  on  amended  manners,  as  the  true  ornament  of 
the  Church ;  i^inst  the  use  of  amulets  and  divination, 
or  the  searching  of  the  Scriptures  for  oracular  responses. 
Under  them  for  the  first  time  the  payment  of  tithes  was 
made  compulsory,  so  that  pecuniary  support  was  assured 
by  the  State  to  the  teachers  of  Christianity.  The  Em- 
peror sought,  too,  to  confine  the  clergy  to  tlieir  spiritual 
functions,  to  bring  the  seculars  among  them  into  mo- 
nastic life,  and  to  keep  the  monasteries  strictly  sub- 
ordinate to  his  authority.  He  settled  sometimes  the 
smallest  matters  of  Church  discipline,  while  he  equally 
concerned  himself  with  the  larger  questions  of  doc- 
trinal belief. 

It  illustrates  his  attention  to  the  matters  of  religion 
that  he  had  the  Homilarium  prepared  and  distributed 
for  use  in  the  churches,  with  sermons  arranged  for  Sun- 
days and  feast-days,  and  with  a  preface  admonishing 
the  clergy  to  the  diligent  study  of  the  Scriptures.  He 
interested  himself  actively  and  largely  against  the  he- 
retical theory  of  Adoptianism,  and  for  the  conversion 
frmn  it  of  its  chief  representative,  Felix,  bishop  of 
Urgellis.^  He  originated  and  shaped,  if  he  did  not 
compose,  the  famous  '^Caroline  Books,"  containing 
wise  counsels  on  the  use  of  images  in  churches.'  He 
favored  the  insertion  of  the  ^^Filioque"  in  the  Latin 
form  of  the  Nicene  Creed,  as  it  had  already  appeared 

1  Sob  NMndsr,  Hist  of  Cliriit  Rdjg.,  vol  isL  pp.  165-168. 

*  K  Oiioli  Hag.  CApitulan  de  Ima^nibiu,  compoiitam  et  publicttmn 
in  oone.  Fimnooford*  et  Adiiano  Pap»  miMiim,  A.  D.  794."  —  Opera 
llQgiie],  ton.  U.  oolL  989-1660. 


il 


44  THE  TENTH  CEMTUBT  : 

in  the  Athanasian,  to  represent  the  double  procession 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  from  the  Father  and  the  Son;  and 
during  his  reign  was  held  the  synod  at  Aix-la-Chapelle, 
A.D.  809,  before  which  he  brought  the  question,  and 
which  decided  in  favor  of  the  change.  He  thereupon 
sent  messengers  to  Pope  Leo  Third,  asking  his  sanction 
for  it,  to  which  the  cautious  pontiff  made  answer,  in 
effect,  that  the  doctrine  represented  by  the  clause  was 
correct,  but  the  change  in  the  creed-f  orm  was  not  then 
expedient^  The  Emperor  had  previously  presided  him- 
self at  the  Synod  of  Frankfort,  in  a.d.  794,  though  leg- 
ates from  the  Pope  were  present;  and  when  that  Synod, 
representing  the  French  and  German  churches,  had  con- 
demned the  decrees  of  the  Second  Council  of  Nice,  he 
caused  a  treatise  to  be  drawn  up,  urging  the  soundness 
of  its  conclusions,  and  pressing  Pope  Adrian  to  affirm 
and  enforce  them.  His  letters  to  the  pontiffs,  espe- 
cially to  Leo,  were  by  no  means  those  of  one  who  felt 
himself  inferior  in  dignity.  He  gives  instruction,  ad- 
monition, and  sometimes  rebuke,  with  kingly  freedom, 
and  seems  not  indisposed  to  vindicate  for  himself  the 
title  which  more  than  one  had  given  him,  not  wholly 
in  jest,  "Episcopus  Episcoporum. "  * 

His  son  and  successor  Louis,  so  far  as  power  re- 
mained to  him,  carried  yet  further  this  supervision  of 
the  clergy.  He  forbade  bishops  to  retain  their  horses, 
arms,  and  military  spurs,  their  belts  thick  with  gems, 
and  their  elaborate  and  embroidered  robes.*    He  sought 

^  See  BchaffB  Hist,  of  the  Church,  vol.  iv.  p.  4811  New  York  ed., 
1885. 

3  Alcnin  spoke  of  him  as  "Deeuc  Eoclesin,  rector,  defensor,  amator;** 
"  cathoUcns  in  fide,  rex  in  potestate,  pontifex  in  pnedicatione,  judex  in 
aqnitate,  philosophns  in  liberalibns  stadiis,  inelytus  in  moribns,  et  omni 
honestate  pncipnuB."  —  Opera  Aleuini  [Migne],  torn,  ii  coll.  780,  S6i. 

*  Michelet^  Hist  de  IVanee,  torn,  i  p,  864^  note;  Paris  ed.,  1886: 


ITS  EXTREME  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAR.  46 

strenQOQgly  to  reform  the  monasteries,  set  forth  in  a 
▼olome  the  proper  rules  of  canonical  life,  had  copies  of 
this  made,  and  appointed  commissioners  to  go  with 
authority  among  and  through  religious  houses,  and  bring 
nunneries  and  monasteries  to  tiie  strict  and  sincere 
observance  of  their  rules. 

Tn  all  this,  you  observe,  there  was  no  immediate  con- 
flict developed  between  emperor  and  pontiff,  the  civil 
authority  and  the  religious.  The  two  moved  as  co- 
ordinate, on  parallel  lines,  with  easy  co-operation. 
There  was  one  religion  for  Western  Christendom,  with 
the  Pope  at  its  head ;  one  government  for  it,  with  the 
anointed  Emperor  as  ruler.  The  Pope  was  Ood's  vicar 
on  earth  in  things  spiritual,  the  Emperor  in  things 
temporal.  It  might  of  course  be  anticipated  that  in 
the  progress  of  time  the  emperor  would  come  to  be 
held  the  inferior,  as  things  temporal  are  confessedly 
less  important  than  things  spiritaal;  but  in  Charle- 
magne's period  no  such  distinction  had  appeared.  His 
imperial  consecration  by  the  Pope,  coming,  as  he  said, 
imexpectedly,^  had  implied  no  temporal  dependence  for 
the  crown  on  the  pontiff  who  conveyed  it;  and  Louis 
the  D^onnaire,  by  his  command,  had  with  his  own 
hands  at  first  assumed  the  crown,  as  if  expressly  to 
negative  the  notion  of  such  dependence.  A  certain 
distinctly  clerical  character  was  in  fact  communicated 
to  the  emperor  by  his  coronation.  He  became  a  secular 
pope,  as  the  pontiff  was  a  spiritual  emperor.     The  con- 

Tnne  ccBpemnt  deponi  ab  episcopia  et  clericis  cingala  balteis  aoreis  et 
gemmeis  cultris  onerata,  exquisiteqae  Testes,  sed  et  calcaria  talos  onenntia 
rriinqiii. 

1  Quo  tempore  impetatoris  et  angosti  nomen  aeoepit  Quod  primo  in 
tantum  avenatus  est,  ut  adfirmaret,  se  eo  die,  quamvis  pr»cipua  festin* 
tas  esaet,  beclesiani  non  intraturum,  si  pontificis  consiUum  pnescire  potU* 
iaset  —  Edthardi  :  Vita  Karoli  If.,  cap.  28. 


4B  THE  TENTH  ODfTUBT  : 

senting  action  of  boA  vm  held  to  be  essential  to  the 
welfare  of  Christendom.  In  Charlems^pifi's  time,  and 
that  of  his  son,  the  Empire  did  protect,  extend,  and 
purify  religion.  In  this  was  a  source  and  aa  evidence 
of  its  strength.  At  the  same  time  that  it  regulated 
monks  and  prelates,  and  gave  earnest  exhortation  to 
pontiffs,  its  conquests  opened  larger  opportunities  to  the 
missionary  zeal  which  never  had  failed,  and  carried 
Christianity,  in  the  form  in  which^  it  then  was  pre- 
sented, not  only  to  Wittekind  and  the  Saxons,  but  to 
the  Slavonians,  and  to  the  Chagan  of  the  Avars.  Every 
Christian  was  held  to  owe  loyalty  to  the  head  ci  the 
Empire,  as  the  Defender  of  the  Church,  and  the  Pro- 
tector of  the  Catholic  faith ;  and  the  unity  of  the  Church 
found  its  counterpart  in  the  unity  of  the  State. 

So  this  was  called  ^  The  Holy  Roman  Empire ; "  and 
while  it  continued  all  felt  that  Christianity  took  from 
it  security,  energy,  and  imperial  eminence.  The  recent 
rise  of  Mohammedanism  in  the  East^  with  its  threaten- 
ing pressure  on  Eastern  Christendom,  had  brought  the 
governing  religion  of  the  West  into  bolder  relief  before 
men's  minds.  The  severance  from  the  Greek  church, 
not  yet  complete  but  ripening  toward  the  final  schism, 
had  made  the  church  whose  headship  was  in  Borne 
more  affirmative  and  self-conscious;  and  it  naturally 
came  to  pass  that  while  the  pope  leaned  on  the  emperor, 
the  emperor  felt  it  to  be  his  mission  to  guard  and  to 
extend  the  Church;  and  the  combined  ^ion  of  both 
gave  apparently  the  surest  guarantee  of  the  progress  of 
the  cause  which  all  Christians  had  chiefly  at  heart 

The  Empire  fell;  and  with  the  civil  disturbances 
which  followed  came  religious  dissension,  decline,  deg- 
radation, still  more  appalling.  Whether  or  not  we  can 
trace  a  direct  relation  of  the  one  as  cause  to  the  other 


rrs  EXTBEm:  depbbssion  aivd  feab.  47 

as  effect^  the  dreadfal  sequence  cannot  be  denied ;  and 
only  as  we  hold  it  clearly  in  mind  can  we  underatand 
to  how  low  a  point  the  moral  life  of  Europe  descended. 
One  feels  almost,  in  reading  the  foul  and  frightful  an- 
nals, as  if  the  ancient  Pagan  temper,  driven  into  the 
air  or  trodden  into  the  soil  before  the  armies  of  the 
Empire,  had  settled  back  densely  and  heavily  upon 
Europe,  and  was  infecting  .and  poisoning  the  very 
springs  of  spiritual  life.  The  atmosphere  of  society 
was  not  merely  obscured  by  superstition,  it  reeked  with 
all  manner  of  pestilent  forces.  This  was  not  true  in 
forests  and  fields  alone,  or  in  remote  hamlets.  At 
Rome  itself,  centre  of  Christendom,  the  vilest  vices  of 
the  times  of  Tiberius  or  of  Caligula  fiercely  reappeared. 
It  is  almost  incredible,  the  extent  to  which  a  frightful 
corruption  there  prevailed.  The  annalists  of  the  Roman 
Church  stand  aghast  before  it  ^^The  Pomocracy," 
or  reign  of  Harlots,  is  the  terrible  name  by  which  a 
part  of  it  is  most  accurately  described.  Milman's  ex- 
^  planation  of  the  terrific  development  is  temperate  and 
brief:  ^^This  anarchy  of  Italy  led  to  the  degradation 
of  the  Papacy ;  the  degradation  of  the  Papacy  increased 
the  anarchy  of  Italy.  .  .  .  Europe  was  resolutely  ig- 
norant what  strange  accidents,  caprices,  crimes,  in- 
trigues, even  assassinations,  determined  the  rise  and 
fail  of  the  Supreme  Pontiff. "  ^  No  Protestant  prepos- 
sessions color  this  picture.  Even  the  learned  and 
scrupulous  Mirbillon  had  to  confess  that  most  of  the 
popes  of  the  tenth  century  ^^  lived  rather  like  monsters, 
or  like  wild  beasts,  than  like  bishops. '' 

Prior  to  the  violent  taking  of  the  papal  chair  by 
Sergius  Third,  a.  d.  904,  there  had  been  nine  popes  in 
thirteen  years.     One  had  died  so  hated  that  after  his 

&  Hist  Latin  Chrifltuuiity,  vol  iu.  p.  152.    New  Tork  ed.,  1860. 


48  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT  : 

death  his  body  was  disinterred,  stripped,  matdlated, 
and  thrown  into  the  Tiber,  while  those  who  had  been 
ordained  by  him  were  compelled  to  be  reordained.  His 
successor  had  been  already  twice  deposed  from  the 
clerical  office  for  scandalous  wickedness,  and  died  in  a 
fortnight  after  being  made  pope.  His  successor  was 
strangled  in  prison. 

The  popes  who  followed  reigned  only  a  few  months 
each ;  and  Leo  Fifth,  a.  d.  908,  in  less  than  two  months 
was  thrown  into  prison  by  one  of  his  own  presbyters, 
who  thereupon  took  his  place,  to  be  in  turn,  within  a 
year,  ignominiously  expelled.  Under  Sergius  came  to 
power  the  famous  trio  of  courtesans:  Theodora  the 
mother,  and  her  daughters  Theodora  and  Marozia,  as 
dissolute  as  herself,  who  for  years  afterwards  gOTemed 
the  pontificate,  bestowing  it  on  their  lovers  or  bastard 
sons.  It  is  not  possible  fully  to  tell  the  story  of  the 
time.  One  or  two  instances  must  suffice  as  indications. 
One  of  the  favorites  of  the  elder  Theodora  had  been 
made  successively  Bishop  of  Bologna  and  Archbishop 
of  Ravenna.  By  her  agency  he  was  made  pontiff, 
A.  D.  914,  under  the  name  of  John  Tenth.  ^  He  proved 
an  able  and  martial  pope,  himself  leading. an  army 
successfully  against  the  Saracens.  But  aftet  fourteen 
years,  Marozia,  whom  Liutprand  called  ^'a  drunken 
Yenus,'"  had  him  surprised  in  the  Lateraa  Palace, 

1  Theodora  scortam  impndens  .  .  .  quod  dicta  etiam  fedisaiiiium  mA, 
BonuuiA  dyitatis  non  inyiiiliter  monarcluam  obtinebat.  Qa»  dnas 
habuit  nataa,  Marotiam  atqne  Theodoram,  idbi  non  aolnm  coeqnales  venxm 
etiam  Veneris  ezercitio  promptiores.  .  .  .  Theodone  aatem  glycerii  mens 
perversa,  ne  amasii  sai  duoentoram  miliarioram  interpoeitione,  qnibos 
BaTenna  seqnestratar  Roma»  rarissimo  ooncnbita  potii|tiir,  Bavenate  banc 
sediB  arcbipresalatnm  co^t  deserere,  Bomannmque,  pro  nebs,  ennunnm 
pontificiam  nsarpare.  — Liutprandi  :  Aniapod.,  lib.  it  48. 

*  Bespondes,  ado,  ta  :  "  Nicbil  hoc  Yenns  ebria  carat*'  —  IHcL  lit  44 


ITS  EXTBEMB  DEPRBSBION  AMD  FBAB.  49 

thrown  into  prison,  and  a  little  later  sufiFocated  wiUi 
pillows.  Shortly  after,  a  son  of  hers,  whose  reputed 
father  was  Pope  Sergius,  was  raised  to  the  papacy 
under  the  title  of  John  EleTenth,^  who,  however,  by 
another  more  legitimate  son  of  hers,  was  ere  long  cast 
into  prison,  where  he  languished  till  his  death  four 
years  later.  At  last  came  John  Twelfth,  the  grandson 
of  the  same  licentious  woman,  raised  to  the  papacy  at 
the  age  of  nineteen,  a.d,  956,  of  whom  no  account  can 
be  given  which  would  not  sully  the  page  and  shock  the 
ear.  According  to  the  testimony  of  his  contemporary 
churchmen,  he  turned  the  pontifical  palace  into  a  vast 
school  of  prostitution.  Devout  women  from  distant 
counties  were  deterred  from  making  pilgrimage  to  the 
tomb  of  Saint  Peter  by  the  justified  fear  of  nameless  out- 
rage. A  synod  at  Rome,  composed  principally  of  (Ger- 
man, Tuscan,  French,  and  Lombard  prelates,  but  at 
which  bishops  and  priests  of  the  neighborhood  were 
also  present,  received  testimony  against  him  from  high 
ecclesiastics  as  well  as  from  laymen,  accusing  him  of 
simony,  cruelty,  promiscuous  licentiousness,  of  homi- 
cide, perjury,  sacrilege,  of  incest  in  his  own  family,  of 
drinking  wine  to  the  honor  of  the  Devil,  of  invoking 
the  aid  of  Pagan  gods  to  give  a  favorable  turn  to  the 
dice.  In  reply  the  Pope  swore  by  Almighty  QoA  that  if 
ihey  elected  another  pontiff  he  would  excommunicate 
them  all ;  to  which  they  replied  with  the  sharp  answer 

^  CnmqtM  die  qoadam  papa  cnm  fratre  pancisqne  allis  in  Lataranenal 
palatio  tmei,  Widonia  et  Marocia  aaper  eoa  militea  irruentes,  Petram 
fratris  ipaiiifl  aata  oeulos  interfeceiiint ;  enndem  rero  papam  comprehen- 
dmte%  enatodie  manciparant,  in  qua  non  malto  post  eat  defnntna. 
Atnnt  eoim,  qaod  oenrical  luper  oe  eiiu  imponerent,  sioqne  enm  peaaime 
aoffoearent.  Quo  mortno,  ipeina  liarotin  filiom  Johannem  nomine,  qnem 
«x  Seigio  papa  meietriz  ipea  gennerat,  papam  oonatitnant.  —  LiUTPBAimi : 

4    _ 


50  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT  : 

that  Judas  had  had  apostolic  power  to  bind  and  loose 
as  long  as  he  was  faithful,  but  that  when  he  became  a 
greedy  murderer  he  could  bind  or  loose  nobody  but 
himself,  and  could  only  tie  the  knot  in  tbe  cord  that 
hanged  him.^ 

This  foul  desperado  was  finally  murdered,  as  was 
currently  reported,  in  an  adulterous  rendezvous,  by  the 
dagger  of  the  injured  husband,  and  died  without  sacra- 
ments. But  others  who  followed  him,  though  scarcely 
riyalling  his  incomparable  wickedness,  brought  fearful 
shame  to  the  pontificate.  Benedict  Fifth  was  degraded 
and  banished.  Benedict  Sixth  was  strangled  in  a  dun- 
geon. A  usurper,  Boniface,  assumed  the  papacy,  but 
was  soon  compelled  to  fly,  carrying  off  with  him  the 
sacred  vessels  of  St  Peter's.  He  returned,  however, 
to  murder  the  Pope  who  had  taken  his  place  as  Bene- 
dict Seventh,  putting  him  to  death  in  the  castle  of 
St  Angelo,  either  by  poison  or  by  starvation.  And  at 
last  came  Benedict  Ninth,  in  the  earlier  half  of  the 
eleventh  century,  a.d.  1033,  raised  to  the  papacy  at  tbe 
age  of  twelve  years  by  heavy  bribery,  whom  one  of  his 
own  successors  in  the  office,  Victor  Third,  declared  to 
have  led  a  life  so  foul  and  execrable  that  he  shuddered 

^  Noyeritii  itrnqne*  non  a  paacia,  aed  «b  omniboa  tarn  nortri  qoAm  efc 
altorius  ordinia,  voe  homicidii,  perjarii,  sacrilegii,  et  ex  propria  OQgnatioiM 
atque  ex  doabus  aororibos  incest!  crimine  esae  accaaatoa.  Dieqnt  et  aliud 
audita  ipeo  bonidam,  diaboli  voa  in  amore  vinam  bibiaae  ;  in  lado  &l«ee 
Jovia,  Veneria»  ceterornmqae  demonam  auxiliam  popoaciaae.  •  .  .  Testis 
omnium  gentium  preter  Romanaram  abaentia  mulierum,  qvm  aanctoram 
apoetolorum  limina  orandi  gratia  timent  yiaere,  cum  nonnuUaa  ante  dies 
paucoa  bunc  audierint  conjugataa,  yiduaa,  vixginea,  yi  oppreaaiaae.  —  Lixrr- 
PRANPI :  Hist,  OUcnis,  12,  4. 

Quamdin  enim  bonua  inter  condiacipuloa  fuit,1igare  atque  aolvere  Taloit; 
poatquam  rero  cupiditatia  cauaa  homicida  factna,  vitam  omnium  oocid«re 
volnit,  quern  poatea  ligatum  aolvere  aut  aolutum  ligare  potuit,  iiiii  9^ 
^■om^  quem  infalioiaaimo  laquoo  atrangulayit  ?  —  Ibid.  18. 


/ 


ITS  ETTBEliE  DEPBEBSION   AND  FEAB.  61 

to  describe  it ;  ^  of  whom  Baoul  Glaber,  writing  at  the 
time^  blushed  to  record  the  shame  of  his  entrance  on 
his  office,  the  vileness  of  his  conduct,  the  infamy  of  his 
exit'  Driven  from  the  pontifical  chair  by  an  irresistt 
ble  tumult  of  popular  disgust,  he  regained  it  by  bloody 
violence,  and  excommunicated  .  the  bishop  who  had 
been  put  into  his  place.  At  last  he  sold  the  office  it- 
self, which  he  seems  to  have  valued  only  for  the  liberty 
which  it  gave  to  his  vices,  and  Gregory  Sixth  purchased 
the  dignity.^  There  were  at  one  time  three  popes  reign- 
ing in  Rome,  who  were  all  deposed  by  the  Emperor 
Henry  Third,  and  to  whom  a  successor  was  appointed.^ 
It  was  of  pontiffs  like  these  whose  character  I  have 
faintly  indicated  that  the  Bishop  of  Orleans  said,  at  the 
Council  of  Bheims,  a.d.  991,  after  reciting  the  crimes 

^  Ciyas  qoidem  post  adeptnm  sacerdotium  vita  qnam  tnrpis,  quam 
foeda,  qaamque  execranda  extiterit,  horreaco  referre.  See  Milman's  Hist. 
of  Latin  Christ,  rol.  iii.  p.  280,  note. 

'  Ipso  qnoqne  in  tempore  Romana  Sedes,  quie  universalis  jure  habetor 
IB  orbe  twrraram,  pnefato  morbo  pestifero  per  viginti  quinqae  annorum 
spacia  mtseirime  laboraverat.  Fnerat  enim  eidem  Sedi  ordinatns  qoidam 
paer  oirciter  annoram  XII.  contra  jns  fasque;  quem  scilicet  solapecunia 
anri  et  argenti  pins  commendavit,  qoam  etas  aut  sanctitas ;  et  qnoniam 
infalicem  habait  introitam,  infeliciorem  persensit  exltnm.  Horrendnm 
qaippe  referre,  tnrpitndo  illius  conversationis  et  vita.  Tunc  Tero  cam 
eoiiMnsa  totins  Bomani  popnli,  atqne  ex  pmcepto  Imperatoris,  ejectns  est 
A  Sede,  et  in  looo  ejus  snbrogatus  est  yir  religiosissimus  ac  sanctitate  per- 
qiicouB  Gregorius  natione  Romanus ;  cnjus  yidelicet  bona  fama  quiequid 
prior  foBdaverat  in  melius  reformavit.  — Hid,  sui  temp,,  lib.  v.  cap.  6. 

*  Desideriua,  Abbot  of  Monte  Cassino,  afterward  Victor  Third,  wrote  : 
^'Cumque  se  a  clero  simul  et  populo  propter  nequitias  suas  oontemni 
respieeret,  et  fama  suorum  facinorum  omnium  auras  impleri  cemeret,  tan- 
dem loperto  consilio,  qui  voluptati  deditua  ut  Epicurus  magis  quam  ponti- 
fex  Tiyere  malebat,  cuidam  Joanni  archi-presbytero  .  .  .  non  parra  ab  eo 
aeeqvta  pecunia  summum  sacerdotium  relinquens  tradidit."  See  Nean- 
dai^s  Hist  of  Christ.  Religion,  vol.  iii.  p.  876,  note. 

*  Benedict  IX.  officiated  at  St.  John  Lateran ;  Sylvester  III.  in  St 
Pster^s ;  Gregory  YL  in  St 


62  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT: 

of  John  Twelfth :  ^  Is  it  a  settled  matter  that  to  such 
monstrous  brutes,  utterly  destitute  of  all  knowledge  of 
things  human  and  divine,  innumerable  priests,  distin- 
guished throughout  the  world  for  their  wisdom  and  the 
temper  of  their  lives,  are  to  be  subjected?  For  what  do 
we  hold  him  who  sits  blazing  with  purple  and  gold,  on  a 
lofty  throne?  If  he  lacks  love,  and  is  only  inflated  with 
knowledge,  he  is  Antichrist,  sitting  in  the  temple  of 
God.  If  he  shows  neither  love  nor  knowledge,  he  is 
like  a  statue,  like  an  idol,  to  seek  counsel  from  whom 
is  like  consulting  a  block  of  marble. "  ^  Confusion  and 
degradation  naturally  extended  throughout  the  Church, 
from  such  excess  of  evilness  at  the  head.  Rome  had 
come  to  be  the  most  vicious  and  wretched  city  of  a  de- 
praved and  miserable  land.  No  public  works  were 
carried  on  in  it;  artistic  activities  disappeared;  the 
classical  monuments  were  ruthlessly  destroyed.'  A 
darkness,  noisome  and  intolerable,  radiated  from  it. 
As  when  in  the  smitten  river  of  Egypt  the  fish  died  in 
the  bloody  waves,  and  frogs  came  from  it  into  houses  and 
bed-chambers,  so  from  Rome,  whose  mission  had  been 
to  christianize  the  Continent,  all  spiritual  plagues  came 
swarming  forth.  Men  like  Hugh  of  Provence,  foul  with 
all  crimes,  bestowed  great  bishoprics  on  bastard  sons. 

1  Nam  talibiu  monstris  ignominia  plenis,  scientU  dirinarum  et  ha- 
manaram  Tacoia,  mnumeroa  aacerdotes  Dei  per  orbem  terraram,  8Cteiiti4 
et  vit6B  mente  oonspicaos  sabjici  decretam  est  I  .  .  .  Quid  buiic»  Berer- 
endi  Patres,  in  sablimi  solio  residentem,  veste  purparea  et  aarea  radiantem^ 
quid  bune,  inqoam,  esse  censetis  ?  —  Si  cbaritate  destitaitor  totaq^e 
tcientia  inflatnr  et  extoUttar,  Anticbriatos  est  in  templo  Dei  aedens,  et  ae 
oetendens  tanquam  sit  Deua.  Si  antem  nee  cbaritate  fondatar  nee  scientift 
erigitur,  in  templo  Dei  tanquam  statua,  tanquam  idolum  est ;  a  quo  ««• 
sponsa  petere,  marmora  consulere  est  — SynoduB  RemeiuiSf  pp.  6(^-61, 

*  See  Hemansy  Sacred  Art  in  Italy,  vol.  1.  pp.  41--4i,  56.  London  ed., 
1869. 


rrs  irrBEMii  dbpbession  and  feab.  58 

Barons  conferred  abbeys  and  bishoprics  on  their  infant 
children.  A  child  only  fiye  years  old  was  made  Arch- 
bishop of  Rheims.  Another  was  put  by  purchase  into 
fhe  See  of  Narbonne  at  the  age  of  ten.  ^  The  f ather,  in 
such  cases,  took  the  authorizing  letters  in  the  name  of 
the  child,  ruled  the  diocese,  and  clutched  the  price  of 
unsaid  masses.  Churches  were  bequeathed  to  daugh- 
ters as  their  dowries.  Simony  was  a  general  curse  in 
the  churches,  since  it  was  the  common  impression  in 
Europe  that  at  Rome  everything  was  venal,  and  while 
men  reprobated  the  example  they  followed  it'  When 
Hildebrand  was  subsequently  appointed  director  of  the 
great  monastery  of  St.  Paul,  outside  the  gates  of  Rome, 
he  found  cattle  stabled  in  the  basilica,  and  the  monks 
waited  on  in  the  refectory  by  abandoned  women.  Per- 
jury was  so  common  as  almost  wholly  to  escape  punish- 
ment. To  a  fearful  extent  drunkenness  was  the  habit 
in  monasteries,  and  vices  viler  than  drunkenness  were 
common.  Robbery  was  the  business  of  a  large  part 
of  society,  and  brigandage  infested  the  public  roads. 
Christians  were  sold  in  the  Saracen  slave-markets.' 
Learning  was  regarded  as  akin  to  magic.     A  church- 

1  See  HalluD,  Middle  Ages,  voL  ii.  p.  172.  London  ed.,  1858.  Bobert- 
■on  notioet  aIso  the  tact  that  the  Coant  of  Vermandoia,  who  secnred  the 
election  of  the  boy  five  yean  old  at  Rheima,  was  suspected  of  having 
poinoned  the  previous  archbiahop  in  order  to  make  the  vacancy  for  the 
child.    Hist  of  the  Church,  vol.  iL  p.  384.    London  ed.  1856. 

*  Gerbert  said,  afterward  pope :  *'  Bomanorum  mores  mundus  perhor- 
reacit."  A  striking  illustration  of  the  prevalence  of  simony  is  mentioned 
by  SIsmondi  (Hist  des  Fraufais,  torn.  iv.  pp.  299-301),  where  the  Arch* 
biahopa  of  Bheims  and  Sens,  the  Bishops  of  Nevers,  Constance,  Nantes, 
Langresy  Beauva&s ,  Amiens,  with  the  Abbot  of  St.  M^dard  at  Soissons, 
wen  all  constrained  to  confess  that  they  had  either  bought  their  places,  or 
liad  entered  them  through  purchase  by  their  parents.    [▲.  D.  1049.] 

•  See  Hallam,  Middle  Ages,  vol.  iiL  p.  816 ;  also»  pp.  808,  809,  814, 
JjoadoB  ed,,  1868. 


64  TBI  TENTH  CBNTUBT  : 

penance  made  amends  for  any  other  sin  almost  more 
easily  than  for  that 

At  this  time  began  perhaps,  certainly  at  this  time 
were  widely  accepted,  those  scandalous  irregularities  in 
worship  which  frequently  continued  into  later  periods, — 
like  the  ^fite  des  saus-diacres^^  at  Paris,  where  tipsy 
priests  elected  a  Bishop  of  Unreason,  offered  incense  of 
burnt  leather,  sang  obscene  songs,  and  ate  upon  the 
altar;  like  that  at  Evreux,  where  the  priests  wore 
their  surplices  wrong  side  out,  and  threw  bran  in  each 
other's  eyes ;  ^  like  those  of  which  Strutt  makes  men- 
tion in  his  ^^  Sports  and  Pastimes, "  —  when  in  each  of 
the  cathedral  churches  a  bishop  or  an  archbishop  of 
fools  was  elected,  in  those  dependent  on  the  Holy  See 
a  pope  of  fools,  for  whom  mock  ecclesiastics  were  pro- 
vided, with  ridiculous  dresses,  and  around  whom  a  mot- 
ley crowd,  while  service  was  proceeding,  sang  indecent 
songs  in  the  choir,  ate,  drank,  and  played  with  dice  on 
the  altar,  afterward  putting  filth  into  the  censers,  and 
receiving  a  benediction  from  the  mock  bishop  or  pope. 
Usually,  these  vicious  spectacles  occurred  on  Christmas- 
day  or  near  it;  but  sometimes  on  other  feast-days. 
When  they  were  exhibited  on  St.  Stephen's  day,  com- 
memorating him  whose  face  had  shined  as  the  face  of  an 
angel,  and  who  had  led  toward  heaven  "  the  noble  army 
of  martyrs, ''  a  burlesque  composition  called  the  ^'  Prose 
of  the  Ass ''  was  sung  as  part  of  the  mass,  performed  by 
a  double  choir,  with  the  sound  of  the  braying  of  an  ass 
introduced  as  a  refrain.^  Customs  of  this  kind  are  not 
extemporized,  and  do  not  suddenly  establish  themselves 
in  the  liking  of  large  communities,  and  in  acceptance 

1  Michelet»  Hist  de  France,  torn.  ii.  p.  99,  note.    PariA  ed.,  1836. 
<  Sports  and  Pastimes,  pp.  845-346.     London  ed.,  1831.     See  also 
**  BritishL  Monaohism,"  by  T.  D.  Fosbrooke,  pp.  46-47.    London  ed.»  184S^ 


ITS  EXTRBKE  DBPBBBSION  AND  mCAft.  65 

by  religiouB  houBes.  They  seem  natural  outgrowths  of 
an  age  like  that  the  character  of  which  I  have  sought 
to  indicate. 

The  belief  in  the  power  of  the  Pagan  gods  reappeared 
in  Christian  Europe.  As  late  as  the  middle  of  the 
eleventh  century  the  story  was  credited  that  when  a 
young  Roman  noble,  about  to  engage  in  play  in  the 
Coliseum,  had  taken  from  his  finger  his  marriage  ring 
and  put  it  on  the  finger  of  a  statue  of  Venus,  the  bronze 
had  suddenly  closed  upon  it,  and  would  not  relinquish 
it  till  the  aid  of  a  monk  had  been  invoked  who  was  a 
magician,  and  who,  induced  by  a  heavy  bribe,  compelled 
a  demon  with  whom  he  had  dealings  to  obtain  the  res- 
titution of  the  ring  by  the  goddess.  ^  One  of  the  popes, 
even,  and  one  of  the  best  and  wisest  in  the  series,  was 
popularly  believed  to  have  been  a  magician, —  Sylvester 
Second,  the  first  pontiff  of  French  origin.  He  had  been 
a  student  of  algebra  and  geometry,  in  connection  with 
them  had  corresponded  with  learned  Saracens,  and  had 
himself  studied  at  Cordova.  He  had  written  a  brief 
treatise  on  geometry,  containing  instructions  for  meas- 
uring the  height  of  a  tower  by  its  shadow,  for  calcu- 
lating the  depth  of  wells,  and  for  solving  other  simple 
problems.  He  had  constructed  at  Bheims  a  mechanical 
clock  and  a  hydraulic  organ.  ^  He  had  lectured  on 
logic,  music,  astronomy.  He  had  expounded  the  Latin 
poets  and  satirists.  It  was  easily  believed  that  to  gain 
such  unusual  and  difficult  knowledge  he  had  sold  him- 
self to  the  devil,  and  that  in  his  death  the  demon  tri- 
umphed.'     William  of  Malmesbury,    writing  in  the 

^  WiUiam  of  Malmesbnry,  De  Gestis  Regam,  lib.  ii.  $  205. 
*  This  nri^t  almost  soem  to  have  been  an  organ  operated  bj  ttaam, 
from  the  deecriptioD  "  per  aqun  calefacts  Tiolentiam/'  etc. 
>  **  Homasiimi  diabolo  fecit,  et  male  finint" 


56  THB  TBNTH  CBNTUBT: 

century  following  the  death  of  Syhester,  relates  par- 
ticularly the  rumors  about  him:  that  he  had  learned 
from  the  Saracens  what  the  flight  and  the  singing  of 
birds  portended ;  that  he  had  acquired  the  art  of  calling 
up  spirits  from  Hell ;  that  he  had  found  at  Rome  a  sub- 
terranean golden  palace,  with  a  golden  king  and  queen, 
and  golden  soldiers,  playing  games  with  golden  dice, 
with  a  carbuncle  in  the  recesses  of  the  palace  emitting 
a  lustre  which  turned  the  darkness  into  day;  that  he 
had  made  the  head  of  a  statue  which  always  told  him 
the  truth,  but  through  a  misunderstanding  of  one  of 
whose  answers  he  came  to  his  death.  ^  That  such  sto- 
ries had  lived  so  long,  and  travelled  so  widely,  shows, 
as  almost  nothing  else  could,  how  utter  were  the  dark- 
ness and  the  decay  of  the  time  in  which  they  had  their 
start 

Indeed,  it  is  nearly  impossible  to  overstate  the  mental 
obscurity,  the  moral  disorder,  the  almost  complete  ex- 
tinction of  true  and  noble  religious  life  among  priests 
and  people,  in  the  two  centuries  which  followed  the  death 
of  Oharlemagne.  What  Montalembert  has  said  of  the 
fifth  century  might  with  almost  equal  propriety  be  ap- 
plied to  this  period:  "Confusion,  corruption,  despair, 
and  death  were  everywhere;  social  dismemberment 
seemed  complete.  Authority,  morals,  arts,  sciences, 
religion  herself,  might  have  been  supposed  condenmed 
to  irremediable  ruin."^  A  certain  promise  had  re- 
appeared when  Otho  of  Germany  became  emperor, 
A.D.  962;  but  the  partial  empire  then  re-erected  could 
not,  in  the  nature  of  things,  have  the  wide  and  deter- 
minate energy  which  had  belonged  to  Charlemagne's, 
and  the  downward  drift  of  the  time  was  not  effectively 

1  De  Gestis  Regum,  lib.  u.  §§  169,  172. 

>  Monks  of  the  West,  vol  li.  p.  8.    London  ed.,  1861. 


ITS  EZTBEME  D1SPBE8SI0N  AND  FBAS.  67 

interrupted.  Hogh  Capet  had  come  to  the  throne  in 
France  in  a.  d.  987,  with  whom  the  France  since  famous 
in  the  world  began  to  be ;  but  his  power  was  restricted, 
as  was  that  of  his  successors  for  a  century  and  a  half, 
and  no  sharp  limit  could  be  put  by  it  to  priestly  wrong, 
to  the  oppressions  of  secular  nobles,  or  to  popular  super- 
stitions and  violence.^  Four  distinct  kingdoms  then 
existed  within  the  territory  of  France,  with  iifty*five 
separate  fiefs.  Each  fortress  had  its  prison,  with  often 
its  torture-chamber  and  oubliette.  There  was  no  ap- 
peal to  a  sovereign  authority,  and  no  accessible  redress 
for  wrongs ;  and  though  there  were  learned  and  virtuous 
bishops,  in  (Germany  especially,  pious  monks,  devout 
nuns,  many  signal  examples  of  a  Ood-fearing  laity,  tiie 
Church  at  large  seemed  almost  to  have  become  an  im- 
mense establishment  for  the  gratification  of  the  pride 
of  the  ambitious,  the  greed  of  the  covetous,  the  de- 
praved tastes  of  the  luxurious  and  licentious.  Those  ac- 
quainted with  the  "  Annals  ^  of  Baronius  will  remember 
the  striking  argument  for  the  Divine  authority  of  the 
Papal  Church  which  he  founds  on  the  fact  that  it  con- 
tinned,  and  still  extended,  in  spite  of  such  monstrous  in- 
iquities, abhorred  of  all  men,  which  for  generations  were 
enthroned  at  the  head  of  it,  staining  it,  he  admits,  with 
ineffaceable  defilements.^  It  seemed  as  if  no  hope  were 
left  of  any  return  to  better  things. 

^  Le  poaToir  royal  et  le  poQToir  national  aToient  ^t^  aimnltantoont 
anteitis.  .  .  .  Pendant  lee  sept  on  hnit  premieres  annte  dn  i^gne  de 
Robert  II.,  raatorit^  royale  6toit  si  compUtement  d^tniite  en  France,  que 
la  aoiie  dee  actions  da  roi,  qnand  on  lee  connottroit  dans  le  pins  grand 
detail,  ne  noos  donneroit  aucune  sorts  d'id^  de  Tadministration  dn  pays. 
— SuMOKDi :  SitL  des  Fran^iB,  torn.  iy.  p.  84. 

*  Qois  ista  considerans  non  miretar,  et  obstnpescat,  dnm  quo  tempore 
•  .  •  ipsa  Bomana  EcclesiacasnTa,  et  interitura  penitos  nderi  potoisset,  tot 
improbis,  sceleratis,  impudieis,  pradonibas,  inrasoribas,  sangainaiiis  et  gras- 
•atoribos  boo  ancnlo  (ut  audisti)  Sedem  Apostolicam  inTidsntiba^  eamque 


68  THB  TBMTH  GENTUBT  : 

At  just  this  time,  too,  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  and  the 
beginning  of  the  eleventh  centuries,  fell  upon  Eorope 
that  awful  dread  of  the  proximate  end  of  the  world,  ihe 
traces  of  which  are  vividly  stamped  on  ancient  char- 
ters,^ the  shock  of  which  seemed  the  only  thing  which 
could  possibly  be  added  to  complete  the  frightful  chaos 
of  the  time.  The  long  tragedy  of  the  tenth  century 
reached  in  ihis  its  indescribable  climax. 

This  expectation  of  the  near  appearance  of  the  Lord 
tn  the  heavens  to  judge  the  world  had  been  founded, 
910  doubty  on  the  interpretation  commonly  given  to  the 
twentieth  chapter  of  the  Apocalypse,  where  Satan  is 
represented  as  bound  for  a  thousand  years,  then  to  be 
loosed  for  a  season  to  deceive  the  nations  and  gather 
them  against  the  Church,  after  which  the  great  white 
Throne  was  to  be  set,  with  Him  upon  it  before  whose 
face  tiie  heavens  and  the  earth  should  flee  away.  By 
multitudes  this  was  expected  to  take  place  at  the  eioA 
of  a  thousand  years  from  the  birth  of  the  Lord ;  and  as 
the  time  drew  nearer  the  expectation  widened,  till  it 
became  a  general  terror.  As  early  as  a.d.  909  this 
coming  end  of  the  world  had  been  proclaimed  by  a 
counciL'    It  had  been  vehemently  declared  at  the  Diet 

depntT&tis  moribiis  oonsporcantibiiB,  tam  yitioso  in  primiB  ingressu^  qttMA 
detestando  pravoram  monun  ezemplo,  qua  etiam  occasione  ejus  dominiiim 
aibi  Imperatores  yendicantes,  •  •  .  eodem  tempore  extemi  longe  poaiti 
▼eniant  Reges  ad  Apoatolieam  Sedem,  qnam  recognoBcant,  et  Tenerentor 
nnicnm  orbia  templiiiii»  asylnm  pietatifl,  oolumnam  et  firmameatiim  reri- 
tatia»  etc,  etc  Quia  inqnam  iata  pmdena  ezpendena,  non  oqgnoacat  Bo- 
znanam  Kceledami  non  hominnm  arbitrio  regi,  qui  earn  Bwpitia  peiden 
laboimiint,  aed  imperio  Cbristl  disponi,  et  divinia  promiaaionibaa  one- 
todiri  ^^Awud.  EeeUHaat,^  torn.  rvi.  p.  i07.    Luom,  1744. 

1  Chartera  of  gifts  to  churchee  often  began  :  "  Mondi  tennino  adptopin- 
qvante^  rniniaque  crebreBoentibns." 

'  Dom  jam  jamqne  adTentos  imminet  illiua  in  mi^eatate  tembili, 
«U  onaea  eua  fnipbtia  aoia  Tenient  paatorea  in  oompaetom  Paatona 


m  SXnUBU  DEPREBSimi  ARD  niB.  59 

of  Wfinlmrg.  Toward  the  end  of  tiie  century  it  had 
been  publicly  preached  at  Paris.  ^  The  general  aspect 
of  the  times  fayored  the  impression,  and  powerfally 
inclined  men  to  expect  the  catastrophe.  Such  was  the 
state  of  society  that  it  easily  seemed  as  if  chains  were 
being  shaken  from  the  loosened  limbs  of  apostate  an- 
gels, as  if  the  shames  and  wroi^  which  desolated 
Europe  were  the  effect  of  that  immortal  malice  which 
CM  had  long  curbed,  but  which  He  now  f<M-  secret 
reasons  again  set  free.  Unusual  and  startling  natural 
eyents  reinforced  the  impression,  and  appeared  to  pre- 
dict the  coming  dissolution  of  the  existing  frame  of 
thing*.  Sismondi  remarks,  with  great  justice,  that 
belieyers  were  in  the  mental  condition  of  a  condemned 
person  whose  days  are  numbered,  and  who  sees  the  time 
of  execution  approaehingr^.  All  prudence  was  discour- 
aged, all  caze  of  one's  estate,  all  preparation  for  future 
years.  ^Partieularly,"  he  adds,  ^it  rendered  quite 
absurd  Ihe  labor  of  writing  a  history,  or  any  chronicles, 
for  tibe  benefit  of  a  posterity  which  was  neyer  to  see  the 
li^itb"^     But  one  writing  a  little  later,  like  Baoul 

iBtend,"  ete.  (OondL  Trosi4).^GiS8BLBEt  Chuirck  HUUry^  toL  iL 
p.  159,  note.    New  Toik  ed.  1S95. 

^  One  who  baud  the  lemion  (Abbo^  Abbofc  of  Fleiuy)  testififld :  "De 
Sae  9ii0(|iiie  Bmpdi  oonun  populo  Mimoudiii  ui  ScdesiA  Perisioniiii  sdo* 
leaoentaliu  audiyi,  quod  atatim,  finito  mille  uinonuD  nimiero,  Anti- 
chriitM  adTemrity  et  son  longo  post  tempore,  muTenale  Jadidnm 
■aooadeift.''  Quoted  by  Baronins,  who  also  aaja:  '^Faennt  lata  in 
Oalliia  piomiilgata,  ao  primnm  pmdicata  Pariaiia,  jamqne  Tnlgita  par 
atbeai,  ondita  a  oompliiribiiB,  aocepta  nimimm  a  simpUdoribiia  com 
timon^  a  doetioribna  vero  improbata."  (AnnaL  BoeMaat,  torn.  itL  ppi 
4UM11.) 

s  Bte  tanolt  tooa  lea  fidttea  dans  la  situation  d'esprit  d'lm  oondamn^ 
doat  ka  jams  sent  eompt^  et  dont  le  supplioe  appioeha ;  alle  dton* 
nvBoUde  tovte  pnidsnce,  de  toatsoindeson  patrimoine^  de  toot  pvftparatif 
poor  raTsnir;  et  en  partionUer,  die  rendoit  presqoe  ildienle  k  tnMrafl 
dTierin  una  histpirs  ao  dai  ohnmiqiui^  ponr  rairantaga  d'ma  yo^tit^  qni 


60  THE  TENTH  OENTUBT  : 

(Bodulph)  Olaber,  could  put  on  record  what  he  himself 
had  seen,  or  what  had  been  currently  reported  in  im^ 
mediately  preceding  years,  and  through  his  eyes  we 
may  still  look  on  the  frightful  scene.  ^  At  an  abbey  in 
Orleans,  a.d.  988,  according  to  him,  the  figure  of  Christ 
on  the  cross  was  seen  to  weep  copiously,  announcing 
coming  disaster  to  the  city.  A  little  later  a  desolating 
fire  broke  out  in  that  city,  sweeping  before  it  houses 
and  churches  in  general  ruin.  Similar  fires  afterward 
occurred  in  many  cities,  and  especially  in  Rome.  A 
terrible  plague  appeared,  with  secret  fires  consuming 
and  detaching  from  the  body  the  living  members  of 
those  attacked,  and  doing  its  terrible  work  in  a  night. 
An  immense  dragon  was  seen  in  the  air,  flying  from 
north  to  south,  terrifying  men  with  its  noise  and  its 
gleam.  A  shower  of  stones  fell  near  Joigny,  of  different 
sizes,  piling  themselyes  in  heaps,  still  to  be  seen  there 
when  he  wrote.  A  strange  comet  appeared,  yisible  for 
many  weeks,  seeming  to  fill  with  its  menacing  lig^t  a 
large  part  of  heaven,  but  disappearing  at  cock-crow.  A 
terrible  famine  descended  upon  almost  the  whole  Roman 
world,  lasting  five  years,  in  which  cannibal  horrors 
appeared,  children  even  devouring  their  mothers  and 
mothers  their  children  in  the  frenzy  of  hunger.  The 
Saracens  reappeared  in  Spain.  Heresies  broke  out  in 
Italy  and  elsewhere.^    One  might  easily  believe,  as  he 

ne  deroit  januds  yoir  le  jour.  —  SttL  des  Fran^ais^  torn.  iv.  p.  87.  Paiit 
ed.  1828. 

^  It  is  not  known  when  he  wu  born.  His  chronicle  wis  finished  in 
▲.  D.  1047»  and  he  was  stfll  living  in  a.  d.  1048.  Some  things  indicate 
that  he  was  by  birth  a  Boignndian.  Early  reoeired  into  a  monasteiyy 
where  he  had  a  brief  and  stormy  career,  he  was  afterward  snooeasively  in 
five  or  six  similar  establishments,  and  is  supposed  to  have  died  at  Clugm, 
to  whose  famous  abbot,  Odilon,  his  book  was  dedicated.  See  Hist  Li^ 
tteire  de  la  Fnnc^  torn.  vii.  p.  899.     Paris  ed.  1740. 

*  HisL  foi  temporis,  lib.  ii.  cap.  5,  7t  8,  9^  10,  IS ;  iii.  8. 


riB  BXTBEMB  DEPBBB8I0N  AND  FEAB.  61 

reports  that  they  did  who  were  the  unhappy  witneflses 
of  the  griefs,  tears,  sobs,  lamentations  in  tiie  midst  of 
Bnch  disastrous  scenes,  that  the  order  of  the  seasons 
and  the  laws  of  the  elements  were  about  to  be  buried  in 
eternal  chaos,  and  that  the  end  of  the  race  was  at  hand.^ 
These  closing  words  of  the  monk  were  written  prob- 
ably at  a  later  day,  for,  even  after  the  tenth  century  had 
closed  without  bringing  the  expected  destruction  of  the 
world,  the  same  terrific  expectation,  though  perhaps  in 
a  measure  relieved,  was  not  dispelled.  It  was  then 
widely  feared  that  the  thousand  years  should  have  been 
reckoned  from  the  passion  of  Christ,  not  from  his  birth ; 
and  that  so  a«d.  1088  was  the  year  appointed  for  the  pre- 
destined end.  In  the  last  of  these  years  the  gloomiest 
portents  seemed  to  reappear  in  heaven  and  earth.  The 
lands  were  deluged  with  perpetual  rains,  so  that  it  was 
useless  to  sow  in  the  drowned  fields,  and  the  elements 
speared  at  war  among  themselves,  or  divinely  commis- 
sioned to  punish  the  surpassing  insolence  of  man.  A 
famine  followed,  more  awful  than  had  been  previously 
known ;  in  which  Greece,  Italy,  France,  England,  were 
involved;  in  which  men  ate  earth,  weeds,  roots,  the 
bark  of  trees,  vermin,  dead  bodies;  and  in  which  a 
more  general  cannibalism  than  had  before  been  seen 
came  to  prevail,  children  and  adults  being  murdered 
to  be  eaten,  and  human  flesh  being  almost  openly  sold 
in  the  markets.'     The  multitude  of  the  dead  was  so 

^  Qoantiis  enim  dolor  tunc,  qcuuita  moestitia,  qui  singaltiu,  qui  plane- 
ta8»  qvm  U/erfmm  a  talia  oernentibiia  data  sint,  .  .  .  oon  valet  Btylua 
^niapiam  ezplicare  ehanoteribns.  JSstimabatur  enim  ordo  tempomin  et 
damentonnn  pnoterita  ab  initio  moderana  aeeola  in  cbaoa  decidisse  per- 
pctanm,  atqne  homani  generis  interitnm. —  BiaL  $uitemporis,  lib.  it.  cap.  4. 

'  Molt!  qnoqoe  de  loco  ad  locum  famem  fagiendo  peigentes  hoepitiif 
leeepti,  noctnqna  jngnlati,  qnibna  snsoepti  sunt,  in  cibum  fnerant ;  plan- 
qpia  VHO  pomo  oafeenio  vd  oro  poaria,  ad  lemota  drcnmTentoa  tracidato^ 


62  THB  TBNTH  CHNTTOT 


great  that  they  could  not  be  buried,  and  wolres  flocked 
to  feast  on  their  bodies.  Great  nombers  were  tumbled 
promiscuoualj  into  vast  trenches.  A  state  of  fierce 
cannibal  sayagery  appeared  likely  to  mark  the  end  of 
a  fallen  and  rained  race,  for  which  the  Lord  had  died 
in  Tain.  It  was  not  wonderful  that  men  following  their 
dead  relations  to  the  grave  sometimes  cast  themselTes 
into  it,  to  end  at  once  their  intolerable  life. 

Looking  back  to  that  period  it  seems  evident  that  the 
mind  of  a  large  part  of  Europe  was  in  a  state  of  semi- 
delirium.  Common  life  was  made  up  of  marvelous 
things,  as  Michelet  has  said,^  it  was  not  merely  in- 
terrupted by  them ;  and  sudi  marvels  took  usually  the 
shape  of  mysteries  of  darkness.  Apparitions  were 
seen  in  the  daytime.  Strange  voices  were  heard  in 
the  air.  Legends  arose  in  giiastly  aspects.  Monks 
saw  demons,  like  those  which  appeared  to  Baoul  him- 
self, of  one  of  which  he  has  left  a  particular  description, 
as  he  saw  the  hideous  mannikin  at  the  foot  of  his  bed, 
with  its  slim  neck,  coal-black  eyes,  narrow  and  wrin- 
kled forehead,  flat  nose,  lips  puffed  out,  sharp-pointed 
ears,  filthy  and  stiff  hair,  dog's  teeth,  etc., —  as  he  felt 
the  bed  shaken  by  its  touch,  and  heard  it  say,  ^Thoa 
wilt  not  tarry  here  long. "  >    Such  dismal  fancies  were 

que  deTorarenmt ;  corpora  defonctorcun  in  locis  plmiimB  ab  homo  evulm 
nihilominiu  faini  aalyrineninti  e<  My.  —  R.  Olabbb  :  EitL  mU  temporit, 
lib.  iv.  eap.  4. 

^  Lea  merveilles  oompoBaient  la  Tie  commime.  —  Hid,  de  J^^nmee,  torn, 
ii.  p.  188. 

'  Erat  aium,  qxuuitam  a  me  dignoed  pofcuiti  statma  xnediooiii,  odile 
graciliy  Cuie  macileiita»  oonlia  nigerrimiB,  fronte  mgosa  et  oontracta,  d»> 
preeeia  iiaribii8»  oa  ezporreetiim,  labellia  tamentibaa,  mento  aabtracto  et 
perangnato^  barba  caprina,  anres  hirtaa  et  pmieataa,  oapilliB  atantibna  et 
iQCompoeitia,  dentibaa  caninie,  ti  $tq. ;  totnm  terribiliter  oonooaait  leeta- 
lam,  ac  dainda  infit ;  Kon  ta  in  boc  loco  nltra  maaeUa.  -^  Hi$L  mi  iMapd  - 
Ub.  T«  cap.  1. 

Oiber  inatancea  of  aaoh  apparitiona  follow  in  the  diaptar. 


ITS  BXTREKB  DEaPRESSION  AND  FBAB.  68 

not  limited  to  the  cloister.  The  army  of  Otho  the  Great 
had  seen  the  sun  fading  in  Oalabria,  and  had  been 
seized  with  terrible  fear,  expecting  the  instant  coming 
of  the  Judgment  When  Otho  Third  caused  the  tomb 
of  Charlemagne  to  be  opened,  it  was  reported  that  the 
Emperor  had  appeared  to  him,  and  forewarned  him  of 
coming  death.  King  Robert,  laying  siege  to  an  abbey 
in  Burgundy,  seeing  a  fog  steaming  up  from  the  river, 
thou^t  that  the  saints  were  appearing  to  fight  against 
him,  and  precipitately  fled  wi&  all  his  army.  ^  His 
first  wife.  Bertha,  his  marriage  with  whom  the  Church 
had  disapproved,  was  reported  to  have  given  birth  to  a 
monster,  with  a  goose-like  neck  and  head.^  Nothing 
was  too  vile  or  too  incredible  to  be  popularly  believed ; 
and  the  belief  in  witchcraft  got  at  that  time  a  range  and 
a  sway  of  which  after  centuries  felt  the  impression. 
The  frightful  and  bloody  scenes  which  subsequently 
attested  the  belief  of  men  in  present  Satanic  arts  and 
raergies  are  in  no  small  degree  to  be  attributed  to  this 
terrible  passage  in  European  experience. 

Of  course  some  effects  of  such  a  dreadful  looking  for 
of  Judgment  were  at  least  partially  good.  Men  became 
reconciled  who  had  been  at  enmity.  There  was  a  wide 
if  also  a  temporary  reformation  of  manners.  Large 
numbers  of  serfs  were  set  free  from  the  bonds  which  it 
was  expected  would  soon  be  dissolved  in  celestial  fires. 
Immense  gifts  of  lands  and  treasure  were  made  to  the 
churches,  of  which  some  effects  that  were  not  evil  came 
to  appear  in  the  following  century.  Especially,  what 
was  known  as  the  Truce  of  Grod  (la  trdve  de  Dieu)  had 
its  impulse  in  those  years,  by  which  men  were  forbidden 
to  take  anything  by  violence  or  to  engage  in  strife  from 

^  B.  OUber,  Hist  sui  temporu»  lib.  ii.  oap.  6. 

<  PM«r  DuuAiiL    See  Michelet^  Hist  de  Fnace,  torn.  ii.  p.  U%  note. 


64  THE  TENTH  CENTUBT*. 

Wednesday  night  to  the  following  Monday  morning, 
under  the  penalty  of  death  or  exile.  This  was  rapidly 
extended  in  France,  though  the  time  covered  by  it  was 
variously  abridged,  and  disasters  falling  on  those  who 
disobeyed  it  were  believed  to  represent  the  Divine  ven- 
geance.^ It  was  something,  certainly,  to  fence  out  regu- 
larly a  part  of  each  week  for  the  business  and  pleasure 
of  quiet  life.  But,  in  the  general,  the  effect  of  this 
dreary  and  fierce  expectation  of  the  end  of  the  world 
was  signally  evil.  It  not  only  suspended  industry, 
paralyzed  incipient  attempts  at  conmierce,  made  men 
careless  of  the  interests  of  themselves  and  their  house- 
holds ;  it  wrought,  as  such  frenzies  always  work,  for  the 
degradation  of  mind  and  character.  It  made  fear  the 
predominant  motive  in  society.  It  excited  in  many  the 
reckless  fierceness  of  a  complete  desperation.  A  scepti- 
cal rebound  against  the  whole  system  of  the  Christian 
religion  became  almost  inevitable,  after  the  thousand 
years  from  the  passion  of  Christ  had  been  completed 
without  the  expected  world-disaster.  Meantime  com- 
munities were  disorganized,  any  true  secular  or  spir- 
itual progress  was  made  impossible,  the  grosser  appetites 
of  men  seemed  often  inflamed  to  a  fresh  fury  as  the 
limits  became  sharper  to  the  chance  of  their  indul- 
gence. It  was  a  force  not  fettering  only,  but  malign 
and  destroying,  which  the  expectation  of  the  end  of  the 
world  for  forty  years  introduced  into  Europe. 

Some  lighter  shades  no  doubt  there  should  be  on  the 
lurid  panorama  which  it  has  fallen  to  me  to  trace.     No 

^  Hoc  insaper  placait  nnivenis,  relati  vulgo  dicitar,  ut  Trwffa  Dami$ii 
▼ocaretar ;  qua  yidelioet  non  solum  falta  prandiia,  yerom  etiam  multo- 
tieiM  diyinis  suffragata  terroribiu.  Nam  plerique  Tesani  aadaci  temeritate 
pnescriptam  pactum  non  timuere  traufigredi,  in  quibna  protinua  aat  divina 
vindex  ira,  sen  humanua  gladina  nltor  eztitit — Glaabb:  Miat,^  lib.  t. 
cap.  1. 


ITS  EXTREME  DEPRESSION  AND  FEAR.  66 

faithfal  picture  of  human  society  in  anj  epoch  can  be 
wholly  without  such.  Love  and  life  were  not  extin- 
gaishecL  Childhood  and  motherhood  had  not  ceased. 
Here  and  there  must  have  lingered  fancy  and  courtesy, 
smiles  and  laughter.  Sunrise  and  sunset  did  not  fail, 
and  Nature  had  yet  bland  ministries  for  men.  Home 
and  Church,  however  unlovely,  however  oppressive,  still 
continued,  and  human  sensibility  was  not  dead.  There 
must  have  been  those  who  faced  the  expected  end 
without  fear,  and  who  saw  the  rainbow,  like  unto  an 
emerald,  around  the  Throne  which  was  soon  to  appear. 
But  few  traces  of  such  are  left  on  the  brief  and  stem 
annals;  and  the  general  picture  of  the  society  of  the 
time  can  hardly  be  sketched  save  in  darkness  and  fire. 
The  very  statues  of  the  period,  as  Michelet  suggests, 
are  sad  and  pinched,  ^  as  if  the  dreadful  apprehension  of 
the  age  had  sunken  into  the  softened  stone.  The  stem 
and  ghastly  mosaics  on  the  walls  of  the  Torcello  church 
and  of  others  bear  the  same  impress.^ 

It  is  certainly  not  too  much  to  say  that  no  other 
period  has  appeared  surpassing  that  in  the  general 
gloom  and  fear  of  Christendom,  since  the  Son  of  Ood 
was  crucified  on  Calvary.  The  earth  again  seemed 
to  shiver,  as  imder  the  cross ;  the  heavens  to  be  veil- 
ing themselves  in  eclipse,  like  that  which  of  old  had 
shrouded  Jerusalem  from  the  sixth  hour  to  the  ninth. 

^  Yoyes  oes  TieiUes  stataee  dans  les  cath^rales  da  dizi&me  et  du 
onsikike  sikde,  maigres,  muettes  et  grima^antes  dans  leur  roideur  con- 
tract^ I'air  aont&ant  oomme  la  yie,  et  laides  comme  la  roort.  Yoyez 
comme  eUea  implorentp  les  mains  jointes,  ce  moment  soobait^  et  terrible, 
oette  aeoonde  mort.de  la  r^snrrection,  qui  doit  les  faire  sortir  de  leurs  in- 
elEBtbles  tristesses,  et  les  tain  passer  du  n^ant  k  Tdtre,  da  tombeaa  en  Dieu. 
Ceat  I'image  de  oe  paavre  monde  sans  espoir  aprte  tant  de  roines.  —  E%$t, 
d$  Fnmeg,  tom.  ii  p.  188.    Paris  ed.,  1835, 

■  Hfsmtain,  Sacred  Art  in  Italy,  toL  L  p.  68.    London  ad.,  1849. 

5 


66  THE  TENTH  GENTURT.* 

It  looked  as  if  the  gospel  had  failed ;  as  if  the  Church 
had  wholly  lost  Divine  virtue,  amid  the  carnival  of  lost 
and  blood ;  as  if  the  wickedness  of  man  had  become  too 
great  to  be  longer  endured;  as  if  the  history  of  the 
planet  were  about  to  be  closed,  might  properly  be  closed^ 
amid  universal  dread  and  death.  Unless  a  wide  reac- 
tion had  followed  after  such  extreme  wretchedness  and 
despair,  the  history  of  Western  Christendom  must  soon 
have  been  finished.  It  is  such  a  reaction  which  we  next 
have  to  trace,  with  the  real  though  limited  opportunity 
which  it  finally  gave  to  the  higher  aspirations  and 
nobler  forces  of  a  man  like  Bernard. 


LECTURE  n. 

THE  ELEVENTH  CENTURY:  ITS  REVIVING  LIFE 

AND  PROMISE 


LECTURE  IL 

THE  ELETENTH  CENTUBT :  ITB  BEYIYINO  UFE  AND  PBOU ISE. 

It  is  with  a  positive  sense  of  relief,  if  not  of  distinct 
and  glad  satisfaction,  that  one  emerges  from  the  fetid 
gloom  which  in  the  tenth  century  and|the  early  part  of 
the  eleventh  overhung  and  oppressed  tiie  life  of  Europe, 
and  enters  the  comparatively  freer  atmosphere  which 
thenceforth  begins  to  appear, —  meeting  a  light  by  no 
means  clear,  but  destined  on  the  whole  to  rise  and  ex- 
pand on  prophetic  skies ;  encountering  movements  which 
held  at  least  some  promise  of  good,  and  which  offered 
encouragement  to  such  reasonable  hope  as  the  preceding 
turmoil  of  crime  and  terror  had  seemed  wholly  to  for- 
bid. In  this  feeling  I  am  sure  that  you  will  sympathize 
with  me,  while  you  will  not  expect  that  the  story  which 
I  am  this  evening  to  recall  will  be  without  its  heavy 
shadows,  or  will  show  sudden  splendors  contrasting 
and  banishing  the  nearly  intolerable  previous  darkness. 
Centuries,  we  sometimes  need  to  remind  ourselves,  are 
not  divided  like  house-lots,  by  fixed  and  definite  arti- 
ficial lines,  the  stable  on  one  side  being  succeeded  by 
the  sumptuous  house,  or  the  mean  booth  abutting  upon 
cathedral  walls.  The  beginning  and  end  of  each  cen- 
tury are  marked  by  vanishing  points  of  time ;  and  the 
influence  of  each  age  asserts  itself  accordingly,  with 
inevitable  force,  in  that  which  follows, — as  the  in- 


70  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTURY: 

fluence  of  one  stream,  merging  in  another,  imparts 
color  to  its  waters,  gives  impulse  to  its  movement,  or 
by  whirling  cross-currents  sometimes  retards  that  and 
makes  it  sluggish.  '^Our  clock  strikes,"  as  Carlyle 
has  said,  '^  when  there  is  a  change  from  hour  to  hour; 
but  no  hammer  in  the  Horologe  of  Time  peals  through 
the  universe  when  there  is  a  change  from  era  to  era. "  ^ 
It  is  not  to  be  expected,  therefore,  that  the  eleventh 
century,  or  even  the  latter  part  of  it,  will  be  found  to 
stand  in  absolute  contrast  with  the  period  which  pre- 
ceded, when  the  mind  of  Western  Christendom,  as  I 
have  indicated,  was  not  merely  limited  or  grossly  oh* 
scured,  but  was  positively  enfeebled;  when  the  public 
temper  was  practically  demoralized  by  calamity  and  by 
fear,  and  when  society  was  reduced  to  perhaps  the 
lowest  point  of  enterprise  and  courage  which  it  ever 
has  reached  since  the  Christian  development  began  in 
Europe.  It  will  be  enough,  I  am  sure,  if  we  meet  the 
signs  of  a  vigorous  reaction  against  the  infectious  and 
baneful  forces  which  had  paralyzed  or  fevered  what 
were  still  leading  communities  of  men ;  if  we  find  in- 
dications of  nobler  private  and  public  aspiration,  giv- 
ing us  fair  occasion  to  anticipate  that  the  period  yet  to 
follow  this  will  show  religious  and  social  advance,  under 
fresh  moral  impulses,  and  will  give  opportunity  to  the 
eager  activity  and  the  consecrated  energy  of  a  man 
like  Bernard.  Such  indications  I  am  confident  that 
we  shall  find ;  and  it  is  necessary  to  present  them  with 
some  particularity,  that  we  may  have  distinctly  before 
us  the  age  in  which  his  work  was  done, —  an  age  so 
different  from  ours  as  hardly  to  seem  part  of  the  same 
time-cycle,  yet  different  also  from  that  through  whose 
foul  and  frightful  darkness  we  have  been  passing;  an 

1  ICiscelUnieB,  toI.  ii.  p.  249.    BoitoD  ed.  18S9. 


nS  BSYIYING  LIFE  AND  PBOMIBB.  71 

age  confused,  but  not  hopelessly  chaotic,  perplexed  by 
many  evil  forces  and  perilous  tendencies,  but  with  a 
certain  moral  life  not  wholly  unresponsiye  to  other  ap- 
peals than  those  of  battle-axe,  bow,  and  pike. 

In  some  respects  Bernard  was  fortunate,  as  I  hope 
to  show,  in  both  the  needs  and  the  promises  of  his 
times.  They  were  not  mere  times  of  blood  and  iron. 
A  reawakened  spiritual  force  was  coming  to  exhibi* 
tion.  Thought  was  already  in  his  day  more  yariously 
active.  New  and  vast  enterprises  moved  and  lifted 
the  mind  of  Christendom,  which  had  been  so  long  dan- 
gerously stagnant.  Instructed  minds  and  consecrated 
spirits  could  reach  multitudes  with  an  effect  wholly 
impossible  a  century  before  him,  while  still  ignorance 
was  wide,  vice  general,  superstition  familiar.  There  was 
a  lai^  possibility  in  the  times  which  he  faced,  though 
vast  peril,  too,  as  we  cannot  but  see  when  we  shall 
reach  them.  The  demand  which  they  made  on  men  like 
the  great  Abbot  of  Clairvaux  was  constant  and  immense. 
I  by  no  means  affirm  that  according  to  the  light  in  which 
we  walk  he  always  rightly  interpreted  that  demand,  or 
folly  met  it.  But  I  am  as  sure  as  of  my  own  life  that 
he  meant  to  do  the  work  for  which  Ood  had  sent  him, 
with  unsparing  fidelity;  while  I  gladly  see  also  that 
he  had  an  opportunity,  and  found  a  measure  of  incite- 
ment and  reward,  for  his  vast  service,  which  he  could 
not  have  commanded  at  any  previous  time  since  Charle- 
magne was  entombed.  To  set  in  clear  outline  before 
oar  minds,  not  merely  the  institutions,  in  Church  or 
State,  in  the  midst  of  which  his  life  went  on,  the  con- 
flicts which  he  encountered,  or  the  public  crises  which 
he  had  to  fronts  but  also  the  tendencies  which  he  mor- 
ally shared  or  vehemently  repulsed,  with  the  nascent 
helpful  movements  of  society  to  which  he  gave  vigor 


72  THB  BLEYENTH  CENTUBT  : 

and  momentum, — this  is  the  work  which  I  wish  to 
accomplish,  for  myself  and  for  you.  Until  this  is 
done,  we  cannot  fairly  set  his  figure,  fine  and  strong 
and  commanding  as  it  is,  on  the  canvas  of  his  period. 
And  this  cannot  be  done,  except  as  we  review,  with  a 
still  prolonged  patience  of  survey,  the  changing  but 
stormy  and  passionate  years  which  more  immediately 
preceded  his  life.  This  evening,  therefore,  I  shall  ask 
you  to  look,  with  an  attention  which  possibly  some 
among  you  may  not  before  have  given  to  it,  at  the  lat- 
ter two-thirds  of  that  eleventh  century  almost  at  the 
close  of  which  Bernard  was  bom,  and  subsequently  to 
which  his  spirit  made  its  majestic  impression  on  the 
life  of  mankind. 

Even  before  the  second  expected  year  of  general  doom, 
A.  D.  1038,  had  come  and  closed,  the  anticipation  of  the 
approaching  end  of  the  world  had  ceased,  as  I  have  in- 
timated, to  overwhelm  so  utterly  as  at  first  the  minds 
of  men.  By  far  the  more  vivid  apprehension  had  fas-* 
tened  upon  the  year  a.d.  1000  as  the  term  of  earthly 
history;  and  though,  after  that,  the  consummation  of 
the  thousand  years  preceding  the  Judgment  was  car- 
ried forward  by  many  imaginations  to  the  year  which 
was  to  mark  a  full  millennium  from  the  Lord's  Ascen- 
sion, it  was  not  in  human  nature  to  be  again  startled 
and  oppressed  as  men  had  been  startled  and  terrified 
before.  There  was  still  apprehension;  and  society 
could  hardly  in  the  nature  of  things  settle  itself  on  sure 
foundations,  while  the  possibility  was  yet  present  to 
men's  minds  that  within  a  generation  the  moon  and 
the  sun  might  be  turned  into  blood  and  stars  be  seen  to 
fall  from  heaven,  that  the  air  might  be  blazing  with  the 
majesty  of  Christ's  Throne,  and  the  earth  be  dissolved 
into  vapor  of  smoke.    But  as  month  followed  month,  and 


ITS  BBYniNQ  UFB  AND  PB0HI8B.  78 

Uie  years  trod  on  in  silent  succession,  as  children  were 
bom,  and  the  weak  and  the  aged  died  peacefully  in 
their  beds,  as  cabin  and  convent  remained  undisturbed, 
while  seasons  more  or  less  fruitful  and  benign  followed 
each  other,  the  expectation  of  immediate  destruction 
inyolving  the  earth  and  all  upon  it,  though  not  finally 
expelled,  grew  fainter,  remoter,  and  terrified  less.  And 
when  the  year  a.  d.  1033  had  come  and  gone,  while  still 
the  moimtains  stood  as  before  and  rivers  flowed  in  their 
ancient  channels,  and  nothing  more  alarming  than  oc* 
casional  meteors  had  appeared  in  the  sky,  the  upspring 
of  confidence  was  swift  and  signal  on  many  sides ;  and 
a  strong  impulse  began  to  declare  itself  toward  better 
administration  in  the  Church  and  in  the  State,  making 
these  more  appropriate  to  an  undisturbed  planet,  and  to 
a  race  continuing  to  possess  it 

It  was  only  natural  that  such  a  rebound  of  spirit 
toward  better  things  should  then  become  evident.  The 
old  life,  fierce  and  wild,  but  resolute,  intrepid,  and  by 
no  means  wanting  in  sagacity  or  in  enterprise, — this, 
which  had  been  in  the  barbarous  tribes  before  Chris* 
tianity  had  touched  them  with  its  power,  and  which 
had  been  refined  and  softened  but  not  destroyed  by  the 
influence  of  that,  as  well  as  by  contact  with  the  Southern 
civilization,  was  still  energetically  present  in  Europe. 
Much  of  a  savage  childishness  was  in  it ;  its  thought  was 
crude,  its  passions  were  impetuous,  its  fancies  were 
often  grim  and  ghastly;  it  had  not  much  of  cultured 
wisdom,  of  self-restraint,  or  intelligent  piety ;  but  cour* 
age  belonged  to  it  in  large  measure,  Vith  something  of 
fortitude  and  of  patience,  with  somethii^  even  of  ex* 
ecutive  skill.  And  it  was  not  possible  that  such  a 
dijGFused  and  animating  life  should  remain  content  with 
things  as  they  were.     It  must  push  forward,  in  spite 


74  THE  ELETBNTH  CENT0BT: 

of  all  obstacles,  and  in  the  face  of  whatever  might  re« 
sisty  toward  ampler  and  sweeter  conditions  of  existence, 
a  more  tranquil,  prosperous,  and  prophetic  development 
of  what  in  society  was  wholesome  and  safe.  The  re- 
ligion, too,  which  it  had  more  or  less  roughly  received, 
gave  helps  and  incentives  toward  this  social  and  moral 
movement 

The  vast  inheritance  of  historical  Christianity  was 
now  a  secure  possession  of  Europe ;  and  while  they  were 
not  many,  outside  at  least  of  convent  and  church,  who 
could  read  familiarly  the  records  of  the  Scripture,  while 
the  copies  of  these  were  by  no  means  abundant,  and  while 
amid  the  obscuring  rites  with  which  the  gospel  had 
come  to  be  encrusted  its  own  radiance  was  painfully 
dimmed,  was  even  at  times  intermittently  hidden,  — 
there  still  were  those,  in  cottage  and  castle  as  well  as  in 
cloister,  who  knew  something  intellectually  of  the  facts, 
the  doctrines,  and  the  promises  of  that  gospel,  and  who 
had  felt  in  their  experience  an  impulse  and  uplift  from 
the  Faith.  Supernal  worlds  were  recognized  by  them ; 
and  from  those  high,  inexhaustible  sources  an  influence 
fell  to  strengthen  and  ennoble,  as  well  as  to  enlighten. 
That  the  Son  of  Ood  had  been  upon  the  earth,  giving 
new  sacredness  to  it ;  that  by  His  cross  atonement  had 
been  made  for  the  sins  of  the  penitent ;  that  through  His 
mediation  the  Spirit  of  God  was  sent  to  purify  human 
souls;  that  His  was  a  law  above  all  human  code  and 
custom,  that  He  was  at  last  to  judge  the  world,  with 
each  man  upon  it,  and  that  beyond  that  Throne  of  judg- 
ment extended  an  'existence  unlimited  by  years,  of  pain 
or  of  peace  according  to  men's  relationship  to  Him,  — 
these  were  conceptions  which  the  general  mind  of  Chris- 
tendom had  absorbed,  and  which  in  some  had  become 
intense  and  powerful  convictions.     The  distinct  im- 


ITS  BEYITTNO  LIFE   AND  PROMISE.  76 

pression  of  them  was  sometimes  shown  even  bj  those  in 
whom  it  might  least  have  been  expected, — bj  vicious 
prelates,  profligate  princes,  the  robber  knight,  the  dis- 
solute woman,  or  the  debauched  and  blasphemous  monk. 
However  stained  with  defilements,  which  all  felt  to  be 
alien  to  it,  the  Church  remained  to  the  mind  of  that 
age  the  living  monument,  the  teaching  witness,  of  these 
transcendent  and  vital  realities ;  and  from  the  sense  of 
eternal  responsibility  to  Him  who  had  returned  from 
the  earth  to  the  heavens,  the  temper  of  the  darkest  and 
most  degraded  of  all  the  centuries  had  not  been  able 
to  shake  itself  free. 

So  it  came  to  pass,  then  and  afterward,  almost  as 
with  the  certainty  of  natural  law,  that  the  expectation 
of  something  better  to  be  attained  wrought  with  a  secret 
energy  in  men's  spirits.  The  Golden  Age  of  heathen 
poets  had  been  in  the  past.  Amid  the  portentous  glooms 
and  terrors  of  the  tenth  century  it  had  seemed  as  if  the 
Golden  Age  of  Christendom  was  also  there,  if  anjrwhere, 
to  be  looked  for.  But  when  that  frightful  time  had 
passed,  and  the  fetters  of  an  awful  fear  had  fallen  with 
it,  the  old  life-force  reasserted  its  vigor,  and  Chris- 
tianity began  again  to  show  itself  a  power  to  renew 
and  reinforce.  It  was  felt  that  the  earth  was  too  near 
to  God's  thought  to  be  permitted  always  to  remain  in 
bloody  ruin.  The  centuries  which  were  dated  from 
the  Angelic  Hymn, —  it  could  not  be  that  they  were  to 
close  amid  wrecks  of  society,  with  the  furious  crash  of 
chaotic  battle.  Sometime  or  other  it  must  come  to  pass 
that  the  world  at  large  would  join  in  the  anthem  of 
Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  with  peace  on  earth  to 
men  of  God's  pleasure.  So,  from  this  time  on,  we  trace 
a  new  impulse  moving  amid  the  sluggish  centuries. 
Men  themselves  may  not  have  been  fully  aware  of  it 


76  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTUBT: 

at  the  time,  but  we  looking  back  can  discem  it  in  his- 
tory, as  one  sees  the  dawn  brightening  into  day  through 
imperceptible  gradations,  as  one  notes  the  change  from 
the  blue  to  the  violet  in  the  tints  of  the  spectrum.  In 
this  fresh  impulse  is  the  key  to  almost  everything  which 
follows,  in  religious  or  in  social  life,  onward  to  the  end 
of  the  life  of  Bernard. 

The  empire  was  now  partially  re-established,  though 
certainly  more  in  name  than  in  power,  in  the  German 
line ;  and  from  the  close  of  the  tenth  century  to  beyond  the 
middle  of  the  eleventh,  the  emperors,  Otho  Third,  Henry 
Second,  Conrad  Second,  Henry  Third,  were  commonly 
princes  of  political  ability.  From  the  year  a.d.  996  to 
A.  D.  1081,  Robert  the  Pious  had  been  upon  the  throne  of 
France  ;  of  whom  Michelet  says  that  in  his  simplicity 
of  mind  he  seemed  to  have  disarmed  the  Divine  anger, 
having  the  peace  of  God  incarnate  in  him.^  His  son, 
Henry  First,  reigned  after  him  till  a.  d.  1060 ;  and  the 
grandson,  Philip  First,  followed  them  on  the  throne  till 
A.D.  1108.  The  power  of  these  kings  was  never  great; 
they  were  sovereigns  hardly  more  than  in  title;  and 
both  in  private  life  and  in  public  affairs  their  counsels 
were  often  perplexed  and  timid,  their  activities  lim- 
ited in  reach  and  effect.  But  such  prolonged  and  con* 
tinuous  reigns  gave  a  certain  quietness  to  the  general 
mind,  with  at  least  a  measure  of  assistance  to  the  new 
forces  beginning  to  appear.  The  French  nation  was  all 
the  time  growing  toward  power,  perhaps  in  part  by 
reason  of  the  recognized  weakness  of  its  kings.  ^    Cities 

1  C'est  Bona  ce  bon  Robert  qae  se  passa  cette  terrible  €poqae  do  I'an 
1<K)0 ;  et  il  sembla  que  la  eolhre  divine  fftt  d^sarm^e  par  oet  homme  sim- 
ple, en  qui  s*^tait  comme  incam^e  la  paiz  de  Dieu.  —  Hist,  dt  Franee^ 
torn.  ii.  p.  144.    Paris  ed.,  1885. 

*  Sismondi  says  of  these  kings  :  "  lis  n'ont  fait,  darant  ce  long  temps, 
que  aommeiUer  sur  le  trdne ;  ils  n'ont  montrtf  qae  foiblesse,  amour  da 


ITS  BEYITINO  LIFE  AND  PBOMISK.  77 

were  slowly  gaining  in  population,  increasing  in  im- 
portance, and  becoming  more  sensible  of  their  place  in 
{he  world.  Industry  revived,  and  manufactures  were 
extended,  of  humbler  things  as  well  as  of  armor,  rich 
dresses,  or  decorated  furniture.  Not  only  carpets,  tap- 
estries, embroidered  cloths,  were  wrought,  with  the 
magnificent  ecclesiastical  apparatus  of  altars,  censera, 
chalices,  reliquaries,  candelabra,  —  a  rude  ceramic  art 
appeared,  and  common  utensils  were  more  skilfully 
fashioned.  By  degrees  commerce  got  itself  liberated 
from  the  almost  complete  paralysis  of  the  past,  and 
b^an  to  knit  communities  together  in  the  vital  though 
frail  and  precarious  threads  of  mutual  relationship. 

Even  the  weather  seemed  to  take  new  aspects  to  the 
rekindled  courage  of  men.  After  the  year  a.d.  1088, 
according  to  Olaber,  the  rains  ceased,  the  clouds  were 
dispersed,  the  smiling  heavens  reappeared,  and  hillside 
and  plain  were  once  more  fruitful.  There  was  strange 
abundance  of  food  and  wine,  prices  were  reduced,  the 
poor  were  supplied;  it  was,  he  says,  like  a  return  of 
the  Mosaic  Jubilee.^    The  French  language  began  to 

npoe  on  amoar  des  plaisirs ;  ik  ne  se  aont  pes  signal^  pur  une  aeule 
gmndft  action.  La  nation  fran^aise,  an  contraire,  qui  marque  ses  fastet 
pv  les  ^poqnes  de  leur  r^e,  s'agrandit  et  s'ennoblit  d'annte  en  ann^ 
acqnieit  k  chaqne  g^n^ration  des  rertna  noaveUes,  et  devient  k  la  fin  de 
eette  mftme  p^riode  V6co\e  d'h^roisme  de  tout  Toccident,  le  modMe  de  cette 
perfection  presque  idMe  qn'on  designs  par  le  nom  de  cheyalerie,  et  que  les 
gnerres  des  crois^  les  chants  des  troubadours  et  des  trouv^res,  et  les 
romsDS  mfime  des  nations  voisines,  rendirent  propre  k  la  France."  —  Hist, 
des  Francis,  touL  iv.  pp.  197-198.     Paris  ed.,  1828. 

1  Anno  a  passione  Domini  miUesimo  memoratss  cladis  penurias  subee- 
qnente,  aedatis  nimbomm  imbribus  respectu  diTinn  bonitatis  et  mis- 
erioordiaB,  ccepit  laeta  fades  coeli  clarescere,  congruisque  sthereis  flare, 
placidaqne  serenitate  magnanimitatem  Conditoris  ostendere.  .  .  .  Eodem 
denique  anno  tanta  copia  abundantiee  frumenti  et  vini,  ceteraromque  fru- 
gnm  extitity  qnanta  in  subsequente  quinquennio  contigisse  sperari  non 


78  THE  BLEVKNTU  OENTUBT : 

take  at  ibis  time  the  form  which  in  subBtance  it  has 
retained ;  it  became  the  language  of  caatlea  and  courts, 
one  of  the  principal  dialects  of  Europe.  About  the 
middle  of  the  eleventh  century,  Edward  the  Confessor 
introduced  it  into  England ;  ^  and  after  William  of  Nor- 
mandy had  been  crowned  at  Westminster,  a.d.  1066,  it 
was  for  a  long  time  the  legal  language  of  the  British 
realm.  The  power  of  the  Saracens  was  now  practi- 
cally broken  in  Europe.  They  had  been  dislodged 
from  Sardinia,  a.d.  1022,  by  the  combined  forces 
of  the  Genoese  and  the  Pisans.  In  the  latter  part 
of  the  century  they  were  conquered  in  Sicily  by  the 
Normans.  In  the  fifty  years  between  a.d.  1026 
and  A.D.  1076  movements  of  Europeans  to  visit  the 
Holy  Land  were  carried  forward  in  large  propor- 
tions; and  the  spirit  of  enterprise  thus  expressed, 
with  the  results  of  that  enterprise  in  increased 
knowledge  and  widened  thought,  aided  the  general 
tendency  of  Christendom  toward  more  benign  and 
salutary  conditions. 

All  things  thus  predicted  a  change  toward  a  more 
genial  environment  of  life,  with  a  finer  and  deeper 
quickening  of  its  force ;  aud  of  course  reformation  was 
first  to  be  sought  in  the  administration  and  spirit  of 
the  Church,  from  which,  as  it  had  been,  such  immense 
evils  had  incessantly  flowed.  I  have  spoken  in  the 
previous  lecture  of  its  general  condition,  as  represented 


potoit  Aliquia  ttum  viotna  hamAnua,  pnster  earnm  aea  delidosa  pol- 
meaUria.  nullioa  entl  pretii ;  eimt  aatom  instor  iUius  antiqm  Moaaiei 
BMgnl  Jiibel«L  —  HitL  mt  Ump,,  lib.  It.  cap.  5. 

^  IngQlphoBy  who  lived  at  the  time,  aays  that  "  all  the  noUea  [m.  Eng^ 
land]  began  to  apeak  the  Gallic  tongue  in  their  leapeetiTe  oooita,  aa 
thoQgh  it  were  the  great  national  language,  and  to  exeente  their  ehai^ 
tan  and  deeda  aftar  the  fiuhion  of  the  Freneh.**  —  ITul.  Orv^imMd^  a.  ix 
1048. 


ITS  BEYIVINO  LIFE  AND  PROMISE.  79 

by  the  pontiffs  who  in  the  tenth  century  had  oocupied 
and  degraded  in  a  dreadful  succession  the  Papal  chair. 
The  disgust  of  Christendom,  though  long  slumbering, 
and  when  first  awakened  languid  and  inert,  had  been 
at  last  sharply  aroused  against  pontiffs  like  these ;  and 
wherever  Christian  faith  survived,  the  necessity  of  a 
prompt  purging  of  the  Church  was  deeply  felt  It  had 
happened,  too,  that  at  the  very  end  of  the  period  which 
I  have  partially  sketched,  in  the  year  a.d.  1088,  per- 
haps the  worst  and  most  infamous  of  the  popes,  Bene- 
dict Ninth,  had  been  raised  to  the  pontifical  throne; 
and  from  that  time  on  to  the  term  of  his  reign,  a.d. 
1048,  he  was  adding  intensity  to  the  general  disgust 
His  pontifical  career  seemed  the  last  tremendous  bolt 
shot  out  of  a  period  rumbling  with  thunder  and  terrific 
with  awful  glooms.  Among  all  men  who  knew  his 
story,  not  among  the  thoughtful  and  pure-minded 
only,  his  name  was  infamous.  Raised  to  the  throne 
at  the  age  of  twelve  years,  twice  at  least  expelled  from 
the  capital  by  the  outraged  citizens,  and  driven  into 
exile  before  the  fierce  loathing  and  hate  of  clergy  and 
laity,  he  at  last  sold  the  Papacy,  as  I  have  said,  that 
he  mi^t  be  freer  for  his  profligate  pleasures.  Failing, 
however,  to  find  satisfaction  in  the  varied  abominations 
of  his  detestable  private  life,  he  forced  himself  again 
into  Borne,  where  two  rival  popes  now  contended  for 
his  place.  At  last,  one  of  his  competitors  having  been 
poisoned,  and  the  other  being  a  man  of  character  and 
influence,  Benedict  was  persuaded  or  bribed  to  retire  to 
a  convent^  where  he  died.  A  popular  Italian  legend 
described  his  ghost  as  afterward  appearing  in  the  form 
of  a  bear  with  the  ears  of  an  ass,  and  as  saying,  when 
tsked  the  meaning  of  this  horrible  guise,  ^^  Because  I 
lived  without  law  or  reason,  (Jod,  and  Peter,  whose  see 


80  THE  ELEYENTH  CENTUBT: 

I  contaminated  by  my  vices,  decree  that  I  shall  bear 
this  image  of  a  brute,  not  of  a  man. "  ^ 

This  intolerable  career  of  Benedict  Ninth  filled  to  the 
brim  the  shame  of  Christendom,  at  the  lust^  simony, 
cruel  greed  and  treacherous  crime,  which  had  so  long 
been  enthroned  at  the  religious  summit  in  Borne,  and 
after  him  a  succession  of  better  pontiffs  appeared :  Leo 
Ninth,  subsequently  canonized,  under  whom  the  schism 
between  the  Eastern  and  Western  churches  was  finally 
consummated,  with  mutual  anathemas;  Victor  Second, 
who  carried  forward  the  work  of  reformation  initiated 
by  Leo,  and  under  whom,  as  imder  Leo,  theological 
discussion  asserted  its  importance,  as  in  the  scrutiny 
to  which  Berengarius  of  Tours  was  subjected ;  Stephen 
Ninth,  who  exerted  himself  with  vigor  against  simony, 
and  against  the  immoral  license  of  the  priesthood; 
Nicholas  Second,  who  carried  on  the  plans  of  Stephen,' 
and  under  whom  was  issued  a  decree  giving  a  needed 
regularity  and  order  to  the  election  of  the  pontiff,  by 
putting  it  in  the  hands  of  the  higher  Roman  clergy. 
Then  came  Alexander  Second,  who  had  to  fight  against 
a  competitor  for  the  pontifical  chair,  but  who  in  the 
midst  of  that  strenuous  conflict  assumed  to  confer  the 
English  crown  on  William  of  Normandy,  who  exerted 
himself  to  shield  the  Jews  from  the  cruelty  of  Chris- 
tians,  and  who  favored  and  furthered  the  measures  of 
reform  before  introduced.  And  finally  came  Hilde- 
brand,  whose  influence  had  been  in  fact  controlling  in 
the  recent  successive  pontificates,  and  who  in  a.  d.  1078 
was  raised  himself  to  the  chair  of  St  Peter,  by  the  united 
voices  of  the  Roman  clergy,  nobles,  magistrates,  and 
principal  citizens,  thenceforth  to  preside  there,  under 

1  HemaiiB,  Hist.  Med.  Chriat.  and  Sacred  Art^  vol.  i  p.  86.    London 
ed.,  1860. 


t 


ITS  RBYIYINO  UFB  AND  PBOIOBB.  81 

the  title  of  Gregory  Seventh,  until  his    death,  a.d. 
1086. 

We  haye  reached  one  of  the  crises  in  history.  Let  ns 
pause  a  moment  to  assure  ourselves  of  the  right  point 
of  view,  from  which  to  survey  the  fierce  tangles  and 
bloody  collisions  which  were  rapidly  to  follow.  This 
point  of  view  has  perhaps  sometimes  been  missed,  even 
by  those  whose  learned  diligence  has  in  many  particu- 
lars made  us  their  debtors. 

In  spite  of  the  almost  desperate  condition  to  which 
Europe  had  descended  after  the  Empire,  through  deso^ 
lating  craft,  violence,  fear,  the  rage  of  rapine,  the  utter 
absence  of  general  law,  and  the  frenzy  of  appalling 
superstition,  tho  desire  continued,  as  Imve  said,  which 
here  and  there  became  a  hope,  of  m^^epropitious  peri- 
ods to  come.  Though  historical  records  were  few  and 
scanty,  the  tradition  survived  of  the  better  time  which 
had  sadly  passed  when  the  empire  of  Charlemagne  fell 
with  his  life.  It  was  at  least  dimly  known  that  the 
distractions  and  degradations  of  two  hundred  years  had 
followed  a  season  which  under  him  had  been  one  of  rela- 
tive peace  and  promise ;  and  it  was  widely  if  vaguely 
felt  that  a  return  to  such  conditions  might  not  be  im- 
possible. But  certainly  no  power,  civil  or  military, 
remained  in  Europe  which  could  hope  to  attain  the 
continental  prominence  or  the  general  sway  which  had  be- 
Icmged  to  the  fallen  Empire.  Not  one  of  all  the  kings  or 
kingdoms  then  appearing  could  look  for  more  than  local 
dominion.  Indeed  each  was  compelled  to  fight  for  life, 
and  to  hold  possession  through  constant  struggle.  If, 
therefore,  there  were  to  be  again  a  power  recognized 
and  obeyed  in  all  the  lands,  it  could  only  be  the  power 
of  the  Church.  The  World-religion  had  not  died,  though 
the  World-empire  had  vanished  as  a  dream.    The  pope 

6 


82  THE  1SLE7ENTH   GENTUBT  : 

was  in  presence,  though  the  emperor,  in  any&ing  else 
than  a  transient  semblance  of  his  former  prerogative, 
was  no  more  seen.  To  aggrandize  the  pope  was,  there- 
fore, apparently  the  only  means  by  which  to  restore 
unity  to  Europe.  What  Church  and  Empire  had  com- 
bined to  accomplish  in  the  earlier  time,  the  Church 
alone  was  now  left  to  attempt;  and  the  separate  con- 
tending secular  powers  must  be  made  subordinate,  aa 
not  hitherto,  to  the  religious. 

In  this  inarticulate  but  real  and  strenuous  tendency 
of  the  age  is  the  key  to  what  followed,  from  the  en- 
thronement of  Hildebrand  as  pope  to  the  time  of  the 
birth  of  Bernard,  and  beyond  that  It  was  this  which 
gave  to  the  determined  and  powerful  pontiff  his  im- 
mense opportunity.  It  was  this  which  sustained  his 
defiant  courage  in  the  fiercest  of  his  contests.  It  was 
this  which  made  possible,  which  practically  inspired, 
the  enormous  movement  of  the  Crusades.  It  had  only 
come  to  clearer  distinctness,  and  attracted  to  itself  the 
more  earnest  conviction  of  governing  minds,  when  the 
great  Abbot  whom  we  are  to  interpret  entered  on  his 
extraordinary  career.  If  we  hold  in  mind  this  general 
conception  as  to  the  temper  and  trend  of  the  time,  we 
shall  more  easily  understand  what  was  yet  to  intervene 
before  his  appearance  in  public  life,  and  shall  possibly 
observe  with  keener  sympathy  the  unsurpassed  force 
and  patience  with  which  he  wrought,  when  his  day  had 
come,  for  effects  which  he  thought  radically  essential 
to  civilized  progress,  the  value  of  some  of  which  to  our 
own  time  we  must  frankly  admit 

Before  us,  as  before  the  Europe  of  his  time,  the  great 
—  one  might  almost  say  the  enigmatic  —  figure  of 
Hildebrand  rises  to  an  eminence  hardly  surpassed  in 
the  annals  of  mankind.     In  the  vehement  controversies 


rrS  REYIYINO  UFB  AND   PB0MI8B.  88 

which  agitated  Christendom  in  his  time,  which  swept 
nations  into  arms,  the  swell  of  which  has  not  yet  wholly 
subsided,  his  name  has  been  clothed  with  an  evil  re- 
nown by  those  who  have  dreaded  and  detested  the  prin- 
ciples of  which  he  was  the  foremost  champion.  He  was 
accused  by  those  of  his  contemporaries  who  hated  him, 
as  multitudes  did,  not  of  arrogance  only,  and  destroy- 
ing ambition,  but  of  falsehood  and  perjury,  of  heresy 
and  infidelity,  of  using  magical  arts,  and  even  of  adul- 
tery ;  and  the  intensity  of  the  hate  which  he  awakened 
seems  closely  to  have  matched  the  gresttness  of  the  work 
which  he  undertook,  and  the  energy  and  tenacity  with 
which  he  pursued  it  Even  by  the  modem  dispassion- 
ate student,  after  eight  hundred  years  have  passed 
since  his  death,  it  must  be  admitted  that  his  temper 
was  haughty,  his  genius  at  once  vehement  and  subtile, 
and  that  he  seems  to  have  veiled  his  intentions,  when 
they  could  not  be  exhibited  to  advantage,  under  forms 
of  words  ambiguous  or  deceptive.  He  is  not  to  be  ac- 
cepted without  reserve  as  hero  and  martyr.  One  is 
almost  tempted  to  repeat,  more  in  earnest,  those  prob- 
ably affectionate  and  ironical  words  in  which  his  friend 
Peter  Damiani  reproachfully  addressed  him  as  ^^  Saint 
Satan." 

But  this,  at  least,  must  be  said  of  Hildebrand :  that 
those  who  knew  him,  and  who  chose  him  as  pontiff,  de- 
scribed him  as  '^  a  religious  man,  of  manifold  science, 
endowed  with  prudence,  a  most  excellent  lover  of  justice, 
strong  in  adversity,  temperate  in  prosperity,  chaste, 
modest,  sober,  hospitable,  from  his  boyhood  well  edu- 
cated and  learned ; "  ^  and,  further,  that  according  to  his 

1  Ifl^gimaB  nobis  in  pastorem  et  snnimam  Pontificem  viruni  relif^iosum, 
femins  acientie  prudentia  pollentem,  equitatis  et  jiistitiee  pncstuutisai- 
anun  mmatorein,  adTersis  fortem,  proiperis  temperatam,  juxta  Apoatoli 


84  THE  ELE7ENTH  OENTUBT  : 

conception  of  things  the  highest  aims  were  always  before 
him.  He  labored  and  suffered,  he  wrought  and  fought 
unflinchingly  to  the  last,  for  ends  which  seemed  to  him 
Divine;  and  he  gave  in  some  directions  a  prodigious 
momentum  to  tendencies  which  needed  to  be  broadly 
revived  and  effectively  reinforced  for  the  progress  and 
welfare  of  Europe.^ 

To  his  forecasting  and  imperious  mind  it  was  evident 
as  the  day  that  of  the  two  forms  of  organized  power  then 
existing  on  the  Continent, —  the  secular,  represented  by 
civil  and  military  governments,  the  spiritual,  present- 
ing itself  in  the  universal  Ghiirch, — the  former  was  in 
all  respects  the  inferior,  to  be  directed,  curbed,  if  need 
came  to  be  crushed,  by  that  whose  prerogative  was  es- 
sentially higher.  The  secular  State  was  always  local  ; 
the  Church  alone  was  ecumenical.  The  former  was  in 
natural  antagonism,  usually,  to  others  of  its  order; 
only  the  spiritual  power  stood  by  itself,  without  rivalry 
as  without  peer.  The  State  contemplated  temporal  in- 
terests, in  a  coarse  and  blind  way;  the  Church  was 
intent,  with  an  inerrant  wisdom,  on  immortal  welfares. 
The  State  organization  depended  on  accidents  of  prox- 

dictum  bonis  moribns  ornatam,  padicmn,  modestam,  sobrium,  CMtmn^ 
hospitalem,  domam  mam  bene  regentem,  in  gremio  hajns  matris  Eccle- 
810  a  paeritia  satis  nobiliter  educatom  et  doctum,  .  .  .  qaem  a  modo 
nsque  in  sempiturnom  et  esse  et  dici  Oregorium  Papam  et  Apostolicmn» 
volomiis  et  approbamos. — DeetUum  tleetionis;  Acta  Bomtt,  dec  kaL 
maje. 

See  Baronius,  Ann.  Eccles.,  torn.  zvii.  p.  857. 

1  Ordericus  Vitalis,  who  entered  the  monastery  of  St.  Evronlt  in  the 
same  year  in  which  Gregory  died,  no  doubt  reports  faithfully  the  impres- 
sion of  him  which  prevailed  at  the  time  among  the  devout  and  God-fearing 
monks  :  "  His  whole  life  was  a  pattern  of  wisdom  and  religion,  maintain- 
ing a  perpetual  conflict  against  an,  .  .  .  Inflamed  with  zeal  for  tmth 
and  justice,  he  denounced  every  kind  of  wickedness,  sparing  no  offendtts^ 
either  thiongh  fear  or  favor."  —  Eedes,  Hid.  b.  viL  eh.  4. 


ITS  BETIYINO  LIFE  AND  PROMISE.  86 

imity,  and  was  largely  fashioned  by  greed,  ambition, 
and  an  imperious  self-will ;  the  spiritual  organism  came 
from  Grod,  through  His  Son,  and  had  His  mind  abiding 
in  it.  The  vastest  empire  of  the  earth  might  entirely 
pass  away,  as  even  that  of  Charlemagne  had  done ;  the 
Church  was  as  permanent  as  it  was  all-embracing,  and 
not  the  fiercest  gates  of  hell  could  at  last  prevail  against 
it  The  State,  therefore,  must  be  everywhere  subordi- 
nate to  the  Church,  serving  it  in  a  dependent  and  an 
ancillary  office,  while  the  ultimate  regulation  of  all 
affairs,  private  or  public,  belonged  to  this  supreme  in« 
stitution.  The  only  hope  for  peace  in  Christendom,  or 
for  moral  progress,  in  Hildebrand's  view,  was  in  the 
unflinching  embodiment  in  practice  of  this  prophetic, 
superlative  idea. 

He  was  the  magnificent  idealist  of  his  time,  its 
sovereign  transcendentalist  in  the  sphere  of  affairs; 
while  his  stubbornness  of  purpose  amHmrtsCtical  skill 
were  not  surpassed  by  any  counsellor  of  kings  or  any 
captain  of  troops.  He  held  himself  the  responsible 
minister  on  earth  of  the  Divine  jurisprudence;  the 
authoritative  head  of  the  one  institution  which  had  the 
ages  for  its  own,  the  continents  for  its  area,  and  whose 
mission  it  was  to  shield,  to  instruct,  and  essentially  to 
unify  all  peoples  of  mankind.  To  the  fulfilment  of  this 
incomparable  and  awful  office  he  had  been  called  by  the 
voice  of  the  Church,  articulating  the  will  of  the  Holy 
Ohost;  and  to  it  his  life  was  thenceforth  devoted.  He 
abjured  pleasure,  renounced  ease,  was  careless  of  secu- 
rity, was  ready  for  any  hardest  labor,  that  he  might  make 
his  life  an  offering  to  what  he  esteemed  the  sovereign 
idea  and  interest  of  mankind, —  ''pro  Ecclesia  Dei." 

You  know,  in  general,  the  story  of  his  career.  Of 
lowly  birth,  the  son  of  a  carpenter  in  a  small  Tuscan 


86  THE  ELEVENTH   CENTUBT  : 

town,  the  German  name  Hildebrand  was  given  him  at 
baptism,  transformed  to  ^^  Hellebrand "  in  the  Italian 
pronmiciation, — a  name  which  his  admirers  afterward 
interpreted  as  ^^  a  living  flame,  *'  which  those  who  hated 
him  understood  to  mean  ^^  a  brand  of  hell. "  ^  The  Ger- 
man name  has  been  taken  bj  some  as  possibly  indicat- 
ing that  German  blood  mingled  with  Italian  in  the 
veins  of  him  before  whom  afterward  the  German  em- 
peror was  to  be  humbled;  but  of  this  there  seems  no 
other  indication.  The  humbleness  of  his  birth,  in  con- 
trast with  the  dignities  to  which  he  was  raised,  illus- 
trates well  that  democracy  of  the  Church  which  even 
Voltaire  discerned  and  honored.*  Whatever  else  the 
Church  might  lack,  it  had  always  this  moral  superi- 
ority above  the  other  governments  of  the  time, — that  it 
estimated  talent  more  highly  than  strength,  it  honored 
the  moral  sensibility  and  energy  which  in  camps  were 
contemptuously  despised,  and  it  offered  opportunity  to 
the  humblest  child,  whom  feudalism  regarded  as  next 
of  kin  to  the  clods,  to  raise  himself,  if  mind  and  will 
were  equal  to  it,  to  the  highest  office.  One  cannot 
wonder  that  such  a  scheme  of  government  stood  near 
and  noble  before  the  hearts  of  the  people,  any  one  of 
whose  children  might  through  it  become  a  chief  over 
princes. 

It  was  natural  that  the  bright  and  eager  Tuscan  boy 
should  be  sent  to  Rome,  to  be  educated  there,  in  a  mon- 
astery on  the  Aventine  hill,  and  that  from  thence  in  his 

^  Pro  varia  dialecto  yarie  nomen  hoe  scribitar,  —  Hiltebrant,  Hilde- 
brandy  Heldebrant,  et  (snayioria  pronnntiationia  caosa)  etiatn  Hellebrand ; 
qnod  postremum,  quia  vane  accipi  potest,  inimicis  Oregorii  et  nialedicia 
occasionem  dedit.  Tn/emaUm  tUionem;  qnamvia  Helle,  non  solam  anb- 
ftantiye  infernnm,  sed  adjective  etiam  Clanxm  aignificet  —  S.  Cfreg,  VIL^ 
VUa^  PatUo  Bemried,  note  2. 

*  Sisai  far  les  Mobuxs  :  (Enyroa,  uL  571,  606»  607.    Parii  ed.,  1877, 


ITS  REVIVING  LIFE  AND  PROMISE.  87 

joxmg  manhood  he  should  enter  as  a  monk  into  the 
greaty  wealthy,  and  at  that  time  the  strict  monastery  of 
Clagni  in  Burgundy.^  Some  of  the  friendships  there 
formed  continued  through  his  life;  and  amid  whatever 
subsequent  power  or  splendor  of  surroundings,  he  seems 
to  have  retained  the  habits  of  an  anchorite,  eating  only 
vegetables,  and  mentioning  once  to  Peter  Damiani  that 
he  had  come  to  abstain  from  leeks  and  onions  because 
of  scruples  which  he  felt  at  the  pleasure  which  they 
afforded. 

Having  already  once  gone  from  Olugni  to  Rome, 
during  the  shameful  pontificate  of  Benedict  Ninth,  he 
again  and  finally  went  thither,  a.  d.  1049,  with  Bruno^ 
Bishop  of  Toul,  who  had  been  appointed  pope  by  an 
assembly  at  Worms,  and  who  afterward  became  famous 
as  Loo  Ninth.  By  this  pontiff,  who  leaned  always  upon 
the  counsel  of  Hildebrand  and  desired  to  keep  him  near 
at  hand,  he  was  appointed  Superior  of  the  monastery 
of  St.  Paul  without  the  Gkites, —  an  establishment  then 
fallen  into  decay,  almost  into  ruin,  through  the  gross 
vices  prevailing  in  it,  and  the  unchecked  violence  of 
neighboring  nobles.  Hildebrand  restored  the  ancient 
rule  of  the  Abbey,  with  ito  austere  discipline ;  he  aug« 
mented  its  revenues  and  recovered  much  of  its  former 
property,  which  had  been  diverted  into  lay  hands  by 

1  Th«  name  of  the  famons  abbey  is  yarionsly  spelled,  ClngDi,  Olagoy, 
Cliuiy,  dmii  It  is  oniformly  spelled  in  these  lectures  in  the  first  fonn, 
as  that  b  the  one  which  appears  in  the  charter  on  which  it  was  originally 
founded,  which  mns  thns  — 

**  Que  tons  lea  fidMes  qui  sont  et  qni  seront  jnsqa'it  la  oonaommation  des 
aiMea  aachent  qne»  poor  Tamoar  de  Dieu  et  de  J.-C.  notre  Sauvenr,  j*ai 
donn^  anx  Saints  Apdties  Hene  et  Paal,  avec  ses  d^pendancea,  la  terra  de 
CuroNi  qni  m'appartient,  et  qni  eat  sitn^  snr  la  rivi^ra  de  Grone,"  ete. 
**  Chart*  de  Fondation,"  by  William  of  Aqnitaina.  See  *'8t  Bexnaid,'* 
far  11.  Oapefigne,  p.  108. 

Th*  monka  came  to  it  a.  d.  909. 


88  THB  ELBYKHTH  CENTUBT: 

brigand  seignenTB;  and  he  gave  endence,  even  then, 
of  the  extraordinary  facally  for  administration,  and 
the  yet  more  extraordinary  gifts  for  conmiand  over 
men,  which  were  afterward  to  be  shown  on  a  larger 
arena.  To  his  ardent  imagination  Saint  Panl  himself 
seemed  personally  manifest,  in  a  vision  inspiring  him 
by  significant  gesture  to  the  arduous  work  of  cleansing 
and  restoring  the  ancient  foundation.^  The  monks 
yielded  to  his  intrepid  and  imperious  energy,  and  at- 
tributed to  him  an  almost  supernatural  power  of  dis- 
cerning the  thoughts  of  men. 

After  the  death  of  Leo  Ninth  the  succeeding  popes 
were  appointed  largely  through  the  influence  of  Hilde- 
brand ;  and  upon  the  death  of  Alexander  Second,  April 
21,  A.  D.  1078,  the  Tuscan  monk,  who  had  not  yet  been 
ordained  a  priest,  but  whose  genius  and  spirit  had  had 
clear  recognition  among  the  clergy  and  the  citizens  of 
Bome,  was  elected  by  them  to  the  pontificate  with  tu- 
multuous unanimity.  In  the  following  June,  after  a 
delay  which  his  enemies  considered  wholly  hypocritical, 
which  his  friends  attributed  to  modest  sensibility,  and 
a  just  awe  in  presence  of  such  immense  responsibilities, 
having  a  few  days  before  been  ordained  priest,  he  was 
consecrated  pope. 

He  had  before  him  from  the  outset  two  ends  to  be 
attained, — the  enfranchisement  of  the  Church,  through 
its  established  and  unquestioned  supremacy  over  secular 
powers,  and  the  reform  of  it  to  purer  morals,  and  to  what 
was  to  his  mind  a  majestic  and  beneficent  spiritual  life. 
As  di£Ferent  as  it  is  possible  for  one  to  be,  in  par- 

1  AppMtena  ei  B.  Paulas  in  basilica  sua  stabat,  ac  palain  manibas  tenens 
■leroora  boam,  de  pavimento  lovabat,  ac  foras  jactabat ;  .  .  •  junitqiit 
•om  palain  apprehendere,  et  fimum  (sicut  ipse  fecerat)  ejioere.  —  Fiia 
&  Qng.  yiL,  Fauh  Bemried,  cap.  i.  & 


ITS  BETITING  UFE  AND  PB0MI8B.  89 

ticalars  of  doctrine,  and  in  all  the  outward  circum^* 
stances  of  life,  from  those  who  are  known  as  ^^  Puritans  " 
in  our  history,  he  was  the  supreme  Puritan  of  his  cen- 
tury; and  a  descendant  of  tiiose  who  made  the  early 
New  England  religious  and  famous  may  frankly  admit 
admiration  for  him,  with  a  certain  measure  of  sympathy 
in  his  aims.  What  to  him  was  the  Divine  righteous- 
ness, he  meant  to  make  the  universal  law  of  the  Church, 
and  through  that  the  law  of  all  the  peoples  whom  the 
Church  could  command.  In  his  intense  enthusiasm  for 
this  18  the  key  to  his  crowded  and  battling  life.  Against 
simony,  of  course,  and  the  purchase  of  ecclesiastical  office 
either  by  money  or  by  promise,  he  vigorously  fought; 
against  the  appointment  of  bishops  and  abbots  by  secu- 
lar princes,  and  the  investing  of  them  by  laical  hands 
with  the  crozier  and  the  ring,  making  them  in  effect 
feudal  dependants  upon  a  sovereignty  which  was  only  of 
the  world ;  ^  against  the  foul,  unnatural  vices  which  Leo 
Ninth  had  vehemently  denounced,  which  were  still  fla- 
grantly common  in  convents;  against  the  concubinage 
in  which  multitudes  of  the  priests  openly  lived;  and, 
as  fiercely  as  against  anything  else,  against  the  lawful 
marriage  of  priests,  which,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of 
preceding  popes  was  still  recognized  and  common 
throughout  Europe, — against  all  these  abuses  and  of- 

i  Si  qnis  deinceps  epiBOopatnm  vel  abbatiam  de  mann  alicqjos  laicie 
penoiue  sosceperit,  nuUatenns  inter  episcopoa  yel  abbates  habeatur,  nee 
nlla  ei  nt  episcopo  ant  abbati  aadientia  concedatnr.  Insnper  ei  gratiam 
bcati  Petri,  et  introitam  ecciesisB  interdicimns,  quoad  osqne  locnm,  qnem 
sob  eifmine  tarn  ambitionia  quam  inobedientice,  quod  est  sceloa  idolatrift, 
deaernerit.  Similiter  etiam  de  inferioribua  ecclesiasticis  dignitatibos  con- 
ttitnimas.  Item,  si  quia  Imperatornm,  Ducnm,  Marchionum,  Comitnm, 
▼el  qnilibet  atecolariam  pntestatum,  ant  personarum,  inyestitoram  epiaco- 
patna,  yel  alienjoa  ecclesiasticiB  dignitatlB  dare  pneaampaerit,  cgnadem 
tentantis  vincnlo  ae  aatrictam  adat.  —  Lab  Cane.  p.  842. 


90  THE  ELEVENTH   CENTORT  : 

fences^  as  he  held  them  to  be,  and  as  some  of  them 
were,  Gregory  put  forth  his  utmost  energy,  and  against 
them  he  wielded  the  anathemas  of  the  Church  with  an 
unwearied  hand. 

As  a  matter  of  course,  these  efforts  wrought  always 
toward  the  effect  of  making  the  pontiff  supreme  through- 
out Christendom.  That  was  his  aim.  But  it  does  not 
appear  that  personal  ambition  was  at  the  root  of  his 
plans,  or  had  over  them  a  goyerning  influence.  The 
supremacy  of  the  Church,  of  which  he  was  fcr  the  time 
the  head,  its  supremacy  throughout  the  civilized  world, 
for  the  welfare  of  man  and  the  glory  of  God, — this  was 
the  ideal  which  rained  upon  him  its  ceaseless  influence. 
To  this  end  he  meant  to  have,  it  was  in  his  view  in- 
dispensable that  he  should  have,  every  bishop  a  rep- 
resentative of  the  pontiff  at  Rome,  dependent  upon  him 
and  removable  by  him,  and  to  have  all  priests  his  obe- 
dient servants,  while  special  legates  should  be  his  min- 
isters in  every  court  and  every  council.  The  "  Dictates  '* 
promulgated  by  him  at  the  council  in  Rome,  a.  n.  1076, 
as  presenting  fundamental  maxims  of  the  Church,  ex- 
press and  illustrate  his  whole  theory.  Among  them  are 
these :  — 

"  The  Roman  Church  is  founded  by  God  alone. 

^  The  Roman  pontiff  alone  is  justly  called  universal. 

^His  legate  takes  precedence  of  all  bishops  in  a 
council,  though  he  be  of  inferior  rank;  and  he  has 
power  to  pronounce  against  them  the  sentence  of 
deposition. 

^  The  pope  may  depose  those  absent 

*^  All  princes  shall  kiss  the  feet  of  the  pope  alone. 

^^  It  is  lawful  for  him  to  depose  emperors. 

*^  No  council  may  be  called  a  General  Council  with- 
out the  pope's  order. 


ITS  BETiyiNG  LIFE  AND  PROMISE.  91 

"  No  capitulary,  no  book,  can  be  esteemed  canonical 
without  his  authority. 

^  His  sentence  can  be  revoked  by  no  one,  and  he  alone 
can  revoke  the  sentences  of  all  others. 

'^He  can  be  judged  by  none. 

^  No  one  may  dare  to  pronounce  condemnation  on  one 
who  appeals  to  the  Apostolic  See. 

^The  Boman  Church  has  never  erred,  nor  forever- 
more  will  it  err,  the  Scripture  remaining  [restante]. 

^  Without  convening  a  synod  he  [the  Roman  pontiff] 
may  depose  or  reconcile  bishops. 

"No  one  is  to  be  esteemed  a  Catholic  who  does 
not  wholly  accord  [concordat]  with  the  Boman 
Church.  "1 

Here  is  the  scheme  of  Oregory,  definitely  and  defi* 
antly  set  forth  before  the  Church  and  the  world.  He 
claimed  for  the  papacy  the  greatest  conceivable  author- 
ity on  earth,  such  as,  according  to  the  emphatic  words 
of  Yillemain,  "  rendered  every  other  power  useless  and 
subaltern ; '' '  and  this  was  the  scheme  which  he  was 
determined  to  make  actual  in  Europe,  as  against  all 
feudal  institutions,  all  kingly  authority,  all  art  and^ 
craft  of  soldiers  and  princes,  all  resistance  of  ecclesi- 
astics of  whatever  degree.  In  that  way,  and  no  other, 
should  the  states  of  the  Continent  be  compacted  to- 
gether in  a  permanent  unity.  In  comparison  with  so 
colossal  a  scheme,  Napoleon's  conception  of  a  universal 
empire  on  the  Continent,  with  France  at  its  head,  ap- 
pears coarse  and  commonplace.  Compared  with  it  the 
subjugation  of  nations  to  the  ancient  imperial  Rome 
had  been  a  matter   wholly  superficial.     The  largest 

1  Baronias,  Anoalee  Eccledast.,  torn,  xyii  pp.  480-481.    Lac»,  1746. 
*  Jamais  puissance  plus  grande  n'avait  et^  cr6^e ;  elle  rendait  toat  aatre 
poavoir  inutile  et  rabalterne.  —  BUi.  dk  Qrig,  VIL,  torn.  ii.  p.  61. 


92  THE  BLEYENTH  GENTUBT  : 

schemeB  of  military  conquest  and  political  subordina^ 
tion  which  had  ever  occupied  the  genius  of  Charlemi^e 
were  low  and  limited  as  measured  against  this.  Only  one 
of  the  great  minds  in  history  could  have  accepted  such 
a  scheme,  and  have  presented  it  in  such  majestic  and 
intolerable  distinctness.  Only  a  wide  reach  of  circum- 
stances could  have  suggested  it;  and  perhaps  only  the 
tremendous  concussion  of  doctrines  so  sweeping  and  so 
unsparing  could  have  smitten  with  the  shock  which 
then  was  needed  the  dulled  mind  and  half-awakened 
spirit  of  the  populations  to  which  they  were  addressed. 
Atrocities  of  action  had  been  familiar  at  Rome.  Prof- 
ligacy of  manners,  an  even  eccentric  vileness  of  char- 
acter, in  the  head  of  the  Church,  would  hardly  have 
startled  communities  which  still  remembered  Benedict 
Ninth.  But  it  was  not  possible  for  Europe  to  be  in- 
sensible before  this  claim  of  a  right  which  annulled  or 
suspended  all  other  human  obligations, — before  this  as* 
sorted  authority  of  one  man  to  govern  on  earth,  and  to 
open  or  shut  the  gates  of  heaven. 

It  must  always  be  remembered,  too,  in  justice  to 
Gregory,  that  it  was  not  a  corrupt  Church,  as  he  re- 
cognized corruptness,  it  was  not  a  Church  of  simonia- 
cal  ecclesiastics,  of  licentious,  ignorant,  and  indolent 
priests,  of  worldly,  luxurious,  half-military  prelates, 
which  he  thus  sought  to  make  universal.  He  meant 
to  make  it  pure,  as  I  have  said,  through  a  return  to 
austere  discipline,  and  by  the  promotion  of  an  ascetic 
piety.  He  meant  that  its  purity  should  match  its  su- 
premacy; that  piety  should  be  fostered,  the  poor  be 
protected,  a  celestial  life  be  presented  in  the  world,  by 
that  Divine  organism,  as  to  him  it  appeared,  against 
which  the  power  of  the  most  audacious  and  insolent 
ruffian,  of  the  haughtiest  baron,  of  the  proudest  sov- 


ITS  BBYIYING  UFE  AND  PBOMIBE. 

ereign,  if  his  plans  could  be  realized,  should  dash  itself 
in  vain.^ 

His  personal  standard  of  practical  religion  appears 
in  a  letter  written  by  him  to  the  Counters  Beatrice  and 
her  daughter  Matilda :  ^'  From  love  to  6od  tb  show  love 
to  one's  neighbor,  to  aid  the  unfortunate  and  the  op- 
pressed,—  this  I  consider  more  than  prayers,  fastings, 
vigils,  and  other  good  works,  be  these  never  so  many ; 
for  I  cannot  hesitate  to  prefer,  with  the  Apostle,  true 
love  to  all  other  virtues. "  ^  When  Matilda,  of  England, 
offered  him  anything  which  was  hers  for  which  he  might 
express  a  wish,  his  reply  was  a  noble  one :  ^  What  gold, 
what  jewels,  what  precious  things  of  the  world  are  more 
to  be  desired  from  thee  by  me  than  a  chaste  life,  the 
distribution  of  thy  goods  to  the  poor,  love  of  God  and 
of  thy  neighbor  ?  "  ^  He  personally  interposed  on  behalf 
of  poor  women  in  Denmark  who  were  being  persecuted 
as  witches,  and  admonished  the  remote  and  half-civil- 
ized king  to  put  an  end  to  such  an  abuse  or  suffer  himself 
the  Divine  retribution.^    He  touchingly  expressed  his 

'  The  ''AcU  Pontificalia"  describe  perfectly,  as  I  conceive,  the  pur- 
pose of  Gr^goty  :  "  Noluit  sane  at  Ecclesiasticns  ordo  manibns  laicorum 
salgaoeret»  aed  eladem  et  morum  sanctitate,  et  ordinia  dignitate  pns- 
emineret."  —  Opera  S.  Ghreg.  VIL  [Migne],  col.  114. 

*  Ex  amore  qnidem  Dei  proximum  diligendo  at^aTaie,  misetis  et  op* 
presaia  aabyenire,  orationibns,  jejaniis,  yigiliis  et  aliis  qnampluribas  bonis 
operiboa  prapono,  quia  ▼eram  charitatem  cnnctis  Tirtatibna  praferre  com 
Apoatolo  non  dabito.  — /(id,  lib.  i.  ep.  1. 

*  Qnod  enim  aomm,  qua  gemmBS,  quie  mundi  hvgna  pretiosa  mihi  a  te 
magia  aant  exapectanda,  quam  vita  casta,  rerum  tuarum  in  panperes  distri- 
botio,  Dei  et  proximi  dllectio  f  —  Ibid,^  lib.  vii.  ep.  xxyi. 

*  Pneterea  in  muUerea  ob  eamdem  causam  simili  iramanitate  barbari 
ritoa  damnataa  qnidquam  Impietatis  fadendi  vobia  Um  esae  nolite  putare, 
sed  potioa  discite  divina  nltionis  sententiam  digne  poanitendo  avertere 
quam  in  iUaa  insontes  frustra  feraliter  saeviendo  iram  Domini  multo 
magia  provocare.    Si  enim  in  his  flagitiis  duraveritis,  procul  dnbio  yestra 

ia  oalamitatam  rertetnr,  etc.  — Vnd.^  Ub.  yii  ep. 


94  THE  BLEYENTH  GENTUfiT  .* 

own  sense  of  sin,  and  his  hope  of  salvation  through  the 
merits  of  Christ  alone.  ^^  When  I  look  at  myself,"  he 
wrote  to  his  friend  the  Abbot  of  Clugni,  ^^I  find  myself 
oppressed  with  such  a  burden  of  sin  that  no  other  hope 
of  salvation  is  left  me  save  in  the  mercy  of  Christ 
alone ; "  ^  and  in  a  pontifical  letter  circulated  throughout 
Germany  a.d.  1077,  he  says,  with  what  seems  a  sad 
sincerity,  "  We  know  that  we  have  been  ordained  and 
placed  in  the  Apostolic  chair  to  this  end,  that  we  should 
seek  in  this  life,  not  our  own  interests,  but  the  things 
of  Christy  and  should  walk  forward  through  many  la- 
bors, in  the  steps  of  the  Fathers,  to  future  and  eternal 
rest  through  the  mercy  of  God. "  ^  I  cannot  for  myself 
resist  the  conviction  that  he  felt  himself  a  Divine  min- 
ister, authorized  and  instructed  to  make  spiritual  ideas, 
laws,  and  welfare  supreme  in  the  world ;  to  limit  and 
suspend  the  authority  of  princes,  which  had  sprung 
from  self-will,  and  had  been  confirmed  by  craft  and  blood, 
before  that  of  the  priest,  derived  from  God ;  to  main- 
tain and  administer  the  universal  theocracy  of  which  he 
had  become  the  temporary  head,  but  in  which,  as  he 
thought,  the  Most  High  would  be  honored,  and  the 
peace,  holiness,  and  joy  of  mankind  be  illustriously 
secured. 


^  Ad  meipsnin  cam  ndeo^  ita  me  gnvatom  ptoprus  o€tioxiit  poncUre 
invenia  at  naUa  remaneat  spea  salaUs,  niai  de  sola  misaricordia  Christi. 
Nam  si  non  aperarem  ad  meliorem  yitam,  et  utilitatem  sancte  Eccleaia 
▼enire,  noUo  modo  Rom«y  in  qaa  coactna,  Deo  teste,  jam  a  viginii  aania 
inhabitavi,  remanerem.  — Opera  S,  Gfreg.  FIL,  lib.  ii.  ep.  zliz. 

'  Blagia  enim  yolamas  mortem,  si  hoc  oportet,  sabire,  quam,  propria 
Tolantate  delicti,  at  Eoclesia  Dei  ad  confasionem  yeniat  oonaentire.  Ad 
hoc  enim  nos  ordinatoa  et  in  apostoHca  sede  conatitatos  esse  cognosetmna, 
nt  in  hac  vita  non  qum  nostra  sed  que  lean  Christi  sunt  qosramna,  et 
per  maltOB  labores  Patrum  sequentes  vestigia  ad  futuram  et  aetemam 
qaietem,  Deo  miserante,  tendamus.  —  Ibid,,  lib.  iv.  ep.  zziy. 


ITS  BEYIYINO   UFE  AND   PROMISE.  ftS 

Of  course  a  scheme  so  vast  as  this,  and  so  reyolu* 
tionary  as  against  customs  of  life  and  institutes  of 
goyemment  everywhere  recognized,  had  to  encounter 
the  fiercest  resistance  on  many  sides.  It  could  not  be 
set  in  operation  at  all  except  against  the  instant  oppo- 
sition of  every  greedy  and  profligate  monk;  of  every 
bishop  or  abbot  who  had  entered  upon  his  office  by 
purchase  or  promise;  of  every  noble  who  wanted  a 
priesthood  to  give  license  to  his  lusts ;  of  the  Qerman 
Emperor  most  of  all,  who  had  inherited  a  great  title 
with  an  important  secular  power,  whose  predecessors 
had  appointed  and  deposed  popes,  and  to  whom  it 
seemed  the  wildest  fantasy  that  the  Bishop  of  Rome 
should  claim  supremacy  over  one  who  represented, 
though  in  a  measure  so  far  inferior,  the  early  preroga- 
tive of  Charlemagne.  Even  the  purest  class  of  the 
priests,  those  who  were  married,  in  happy  homes,  with 
wives  by  their  side  and  children  around  them,  looked 
with  equal  fear  and  horror  on  this  pontifical  purpose  to 
east  dishonor  on  their  wives,  and  to  take  from  their 
children  inheritance  and  name.  Archbishops  were 
stoned  in  their  pulpits  when  they  read  the  decrees; 
abbots  were  dragged  from  the  assemblies,  and  hardly 
rescued  alive.  The  rancor  excited  had  almost  no  pre- 
cedent A  man  at  Cambrai  was  burned  alive  for  up- 
holding the  decrees.  ^ 

Of  course,  too,  Gregory  had  no  armed  forces  at  his 
command  sufficient  to  carry  into  effect  his  amazing  and 
daring  plan.  Indeed,  he  was  not  always  secure  in  the 
capital,  or  in  St.  Peter's;  and  it  is  a  noticeable  fact 
fhat^  as  Alexander  Second  had  not  been  in  quiet  posses- 
sion of  Rome  when  he  sent  his  blessing  to  William 
of  Normandy,  with  the  consecrated  banner  bearing  the 

^  Qngoirj  himaelf  is  the  aatbority  for  Uui.  —  Opera,  lib.  iy.  ep.  sl 


96  THE  ELETENTH  CENTUBT: 

Agnus  Dei  blazing  on  it  in  gold  embroidery,  and  as- 
sumed to  transfer  the  kingdom  to  him,  so  Gregory  was 
attacked  in  church,  was  taken  prisoner  and  subjected 
to  outrage  by  Roman  brigands,  at  the  very  time  when, 
as  sovereign  pontiff,  he  claimed  authority  over  kings 
and  emperors,  whose  privilege  it  was  to  kiss  his 
feet. 

But  he  had,  at  the  same  time,  vast  powers  with  which 
to  work,  and  an  equipment  of  instruments  which  no 
king  could  rival,  with  some  signal  opportunities  for 
success.  The  genius  of  the  Roman  Church  had  always 
expressed  itself  not  so  much  in  eloquence  of  speech,  or 
in  copiousness  of  writing,  as  in  careful,  compact,  and 
effective  organization.  The  entire  control  of  that  or* 
ganization,  which  had  now  been  matured  and  consoli- 
dated by  time,  was  in  the  hands  of  Gregory,  to  be  used 
by  him  with  the  steadiness  and  strength  of  his  extraor- 
dinary will.  The  imperial  place  of  the  great  capital 
in  the  world  had  never  been  practically  lost  Remote 
tribes,  the  descendants  of  those  who  had  stricken  and 
shattered  the  early  Empire,  still  looked  with  wonder- 
ing awe  to  <he  city  enthroned  upon  the  hills  to  which 
it  had  given  a  world-wide  fame.  Especially,  every 
priest  of  the  Church  stood  in  conscious  relation  to  the 
pontifical  capital  His  education  affiliated  him  with 
it  Its  language  was  his  ofiicial  vernacular;  and  no 
doubt  because  he  saw  the  constant  effect  of  this,  Greg- 
ory forbade  the  translation  of  the  ofiices  of  the  Church 
into  any  other  tongue, —  as,  for  example,  the  Slavonic.^ 

^  Thns  he  wrote  to  Wntislas,  Duke  of  BohemU  :  — 

Quia  vero  nobilitas  toa  postnlayit  quod  secundum  Sdayonieam  tin- 
guaxn  apud  roe  dinnum  celebrari  annueremue  Officium,  scias  dos  boic 
petitioni  tUK  nequaqnam  posse  favere.  £z  hoc  nempe  snpe  volrentibus 
liquet  non  immerito  aacnm  Scriptunm  omnipotenti  Deo  placaisae  quibiia- 


ITS  EBYIYINO  UFE  AND  PBOMISB.  9T 

Being  diyorced,  too,  from  family  ties,  if  the  scheme  of 
the  Pontiff  could  be  accomplished,  the  Ohurch  would 
become  the  only  country  of  every  priest,  with  Rome  for 
its  imposing  centre.  If,  then,  that  Church  were  purged 
of  scandals,  redeemed  from  iniquities,  revitalized  with 
a  unifying  life,  he  at  the  head  of  it  would  hold  Ohris- 
tendom  in  his  hand,  to  govern  and  guide  it  at  every 
point 

His  own  character  gave  him  prodigious  advantage. 
Those  who  reviled  him  knew  that  their  reproaches 
were  in  large  measure  a  mere  gnashing  of  teetL  The 
dignity  of  his  life,  his  patience,  fortitude,  and  stead- 
fastness of  spirit,  were  in  illustrious  contrast  not  only 
with  the  wretched  and  infamous  prelates  who  had  often 
preceded  him,  but  with  the  character  and  life  of  such 
principal  antagonists  as  Henry  Fourth,  of  Germany, 
and  Philip  First,  of  France.  The  men  of  nobler  thought 
and  temper  were  widely  in  sympathy  with  him,  while 
Hie  poor,  who  had  been  oppressed  with  relentless  se- 
verity by  soldiers  and  nobles,  were  elated  by  his  power, 
and  anticipated  a  refuge  more  accessible  and  secure 
than  they  perhaps  found  in  his  sublime  appellate  au- 
thority. The  superstitious  temper  of  the  time  supplied 
precisely  the  element  which  he  needed  to  make  his  as- 
saults on  his  opponents  effective.  When  calamities 
threatened  part  of  Germany,  and  the  monarch  had  de- 
fied him,  it  was  currently  reported  that  the  very  im- 
ages of  Christ  in  the  churches  had  broken  into  bloody 
sweat,  that  real  blood  had  appeared,  excluding  even 
the  accidents  of  wine,  in  the  sacramental  cup.  When 
the  Bishop  of  Utrecht  had  disregarded  the  anathemas 


dam  loeif  etm  oeenlUm,  ne,  d  ad  liqnidimi  cnnctis  patsret,  forte 

•t  mlijaoeffet  deapeotai^  ant  pra^a  intellacta  a  mediocribus  in  er rarem  in* 

dBMiit— 'Cipfraii  lih  Tii  ep.  xL 


08  THE  ELEYENTH  GENTDBY: 

of  the  PontifE,  and  encouraged  the  king  also  to  defy 
them,  it  was  believed  that  his  death,  soon  following, 
had  been  attended  with  strange  anguish,  and  that  he 
himself  had  seen  devils  around  him,  and  had  declined 
offered  prayers  as  of  no  avail.  ^  There  was  something 
more  terrible  to  men's  imagination  in  that  perplexed 
and  anxious  time  than  warriors  in  mail, —  even  the  in- 
visible celestial  hosts,  of  which  the  silent  air  was  fulL 
There  was  a  power  more  awful  than  that  of  barons  or 
kings,  though  their  castles  were  strong,  their  troops 
many,  their  torture-chambers  terrible  to  think  of.  It 
was  the  power  which,  after  men  were  killed,  had  au* 
thority  to  cast  their  souls  into  hell.  The  mind  of 
Europe  thus  generally  responded  to  the  words  of  Oreg* 
ory  when  he  admonished  a  prelate  favorable  to  Henry, 
and  through  him  Henry  himself,  that  the  power  of  kings 
and  emperors,  and  all  combined  endeavors  of  mortals,  as 
opposed  to  the  apostolic  rights  and  the  omnipotence  of 
God,  were  only  as  a  vanishing  spark  and  as  light  chaff.  ^ 
So  the  amazing  spectacle  became  possible  of  a  weak  and 
sickly  man  at  Rome,  of  slight  frame  and  low  stature, 
as  he  is  described,  sixty  years  old,  without  armies,  with- 
out princely  allies,  sometimes  destitute,  as  he  said,  of 
all  help  of  man,  contending  fearlessly,  to  a  great  extent 
successfully,  to  establish  a  system  against  which  the 
most  powerful  rulers  of  the  Continent  fought  with  the 
instinct  of  self-preservation,  sometimes  with  the  fierce 
energy  of  despair. 
It  would  have  been,  it  seems  to  us,  the  destruction 

1  Villemain,  Hist,  de  Gi^.  YIL,  torn,  ii  p.  66. 

*  Atqne  hoc  in  animo  gonwt,  quod  regam  et  impentomm  TirtoSy  et 
uniyeraa  inortaliam  conamina,  contra  apostolica  jura  et  onmipotentiaiii 
<ammi  Dei  quasi  favilla  compatentnr  et  palea,  nuUios  nnqiiam  instincta 
Tel  fiducta  adversos  diTinam  et  apoetolioam  auctoritatem  olwtinata  temeri- 
tBte  te  rebellem  et  pertinacem  fieri  libeat  —  6>p«ra,  lib.  iii  op.  Tiii. 


ITS  BEViyiNG  UFE  AND  PBOHISB.  99 

of  civilization,  the  conversion  of  the  Church  into  an 
engine  of  remorseless  oppression,  if  the  scheme  of  Hil- 
debrand  had  wholly  prevailed.  We  find  a  measure  of 
the  progress  of  the  centuries  in  the  hopeless  absurdity 
of  putting  such  a  scheme  into  practice  to-day.  But  we 
may  not  foi^t  that,  as  the  matter  appeared  to  him  at 
the  time,  it  was  more  than  a  contest  even  for  the  unity 
of  Europe ;  it  was  a  contest  of  the  spiritual  against  the 
I^ysical ;  of  faith  against  force ;  of  the  poor  and  obscure 
against  haughty  oppressors ;  of  that  which  was  founded 
in  the  Divine  order  against  that  which  had  sprung  from 
human  self-will ;  in  a  word,  it  was  the  contest  of  Ood 
in  His  Church  against  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the 
devil.  We  may  call  the  conscience  which  had  formed 
itself  in  him  a  special,  official,  and  secondary  con- 
science, as  artificial  in  nature  as  it  was  imperative  and 
unsparing  in  impulse.  I  think,  for  myself,  that  it  may 
be  properly  thus  described.  But  it  was  his  conscience 
at  the  time ;  and  at  its  dictation  he  flung  his  life  into 
the  prodigious  crucial  combat  with  an  unsparing  energy. 
With  absolute  fearlessness  of  what  man  could  do,  he 
bore  his  own  part  in  it.  With  an  unrelaxing  zeal  he 
pursued  it,  till  the  day  when  he  died  at  Salerno,  in  the 
early  summer  of  a.  p.  1085,  a  fugitive  from  his  capital, 
a  pensioner  on  his  friends,  exclaiming,  with  almost  hi& 
latest  breath,  ^^I  have  loved  righteousness  and  hated 
iniquity ;  therefore  I  die  in  exile. ''  The  stormy  pon- 
tificate of  twelve  years  was  ended  there.  The  nearly 
seventy  years  of  his  life  were  finished,  under  heavy 
shadows,  and  the  commanding  and  vehement  spirit  left 
at  last  the  meagre,  wearied,  and  wasted  frame.  But 
the  consequences  of  his  intrepid  life  and  remarkable 
work  long  survived,  and  to  their  importance  no  reader 
of  history  can  be  blind. 


28f^030A 


100  THE  ELEYEatTH  GKNTUBT  : 

Undoabtedly,  the  fiercest  clash  of  the  conflici,^  tha 
echo  of  which  has  ever  since  resounded  in  the  world, 
came  in  his  persistent  contest,  ending  only  with  his 
pontifical  life,  with  Henry  Fourth  of  Germany,  whom 
he  had  recognized  as  king,  and  to  whom  he  permitted 
the  title  of  emperor,  though  refusing  to  crown  hiuL 
Henry  fought  against  Gregory  by  intrigue  and  by  arms, 
with  all  the  fury  of  his  ambitious  and  passionate  na- 
ture. A  council  of  bishops,  abbots,  and  lords,  from 
all  parts  of  the  empire,  convened  by  the  king  at  Worms, 
A.D.  1076,  pronounced  Gregory  an  apostate  monk,  who 
had  unlawfully  seized  the  papacy,  who  used  magical 
arts,  who  degraded  theology  by  new  doctrines,  who 
mingled  sacred  things  with  profane,  separated  wives 
from  their  husbands,  preferred  adultery  and  incest  to 
lawful  marriage,  deceived  the  people  with  a  6ctitious 
religion,  was  ruining  the  papacy,  and  was  guilty  of 
high  treason.  Therefore  it  proceeded  to  depose  him, 
—  a  sentence  which  was  hailed  with  joy  by  multitudes 
on  the  south  of  the  Alps  as  well  as  in  Germany.  Greg- 
ory responded  with  a  terrific  anathema,  and  in  turn 
declared  Henry  deposed,  and  loosed  all  Christian  sub- 
jects from  allegiance  to  him.  With  an  emphasis  pos- 
sible to  no  other  man,  he  set  before  Europe  his  favorite 
doctrine  that  civil  and  military  dignities  had  been  the 
product  of  an  age  which  knew  not  €rod ;  that  dukes  and 
princes  had  come  to  exist  because  they  had  dared,  in 
their  blind  passion  and  intolerable  pride,  to  set  them- 
selves up  by  instigation  of  the  Devil,  and  with  the 
commission  of  every  crime,  as  masters  over  men  who 
had  been  created  their  equals;  and  that  when  they 
sought  to  make  the  priests  of  the  Lord  follow  in  their 
path,  they  were  only  to  be  compared  to  the  Devil  him- 
self, who  had  said  aforetime  to  the  chief  of  all  priests, 


ITS  REVTVING  UPB  AND  PROMISE.  101 

the  Son  of  God,  ^  all  these  things  will  I  give  thee,  if 
thou  wilt  fall  down  and  worship  me. "  ^ 

The  fierce  swing  of  the  papal  words  was  enough  of 
itself  to  startle  rude  minds ;  and  the  terrible  democracy 
of  his  appeal  to  peoples  to  disregard  the  authority  of 
a  king  who  had  incurred  the  censure  of  the  Church,  — 
the  apparently  triumphant  energy  with  which  this  son 
of  a  Tuscan  mechanic,  enthroned  by  the  Church,  faced 
the  arts  and  the  arms  of  one  bom  in  the  purple,  and 
called  the  faithful,  of  whateyer  rank,  to  disown  and 
destroy  his  unrighteous  power, — this  stirred  to  its 
depths  the  mind  of  the  Continent,  as  it  had  never  before 
been  stirred  since  Charlemagne  became  Emperor  of 
the  West  It  frightened,  long  afterward,  the  eloquent 
Bossuet,  when  he  thought  of  such  a  power  as  capable 
of  being  employed  even  against  his  magnificent  sov- 
ereign. Undoubtedly,  the  Declaration  of  the  clergy  of 
France  touching  the  ecclesiastical  power,  formulated  by 
him,  had  here  in  part  its  motive.^    Certainly  the  claim 

^  Quia  neseiat  veges  et  daoes  ab  lis  babniasfr  principinoi,  qui,  Deiim  igno- 
lantea,  aitperbiay  TapiiiiB»  perfidia  bomiddiis,  postremo  imiyeraU  pene  scele- 
ribna^  mnndi  prindpe  diabolo  videlioet  agttante,  taper  pareB,  soilioet 
lioauiiesy  domioari  c«ca  capiditate  et  intoleTabili  praeumptione  affectaTe- 
nat?  Qui  videlicet,  dnm  saoerdotes  Domini  ad  vettigia  sua  inclinara 
ecmteadufit,  cai  nctins  comparentur  qnam  ei  qui  est  eapnt  saper  omnes 
filios  soperbtflB,  qui  ipsam  sammiim  pontificem  saoerdotom  caput  Altissimi 
VQimn  tentaas,  et  omnia  illi  mondi  r^gna  promittens,  ait :  Hibc  omnia 
tiU  dabo^  si  proddens  adoraTeris  me  f  —  Opent^  lib.  viiL  cp.  zxL ;  coL  696. 

*  His  words  are  as  dear  and  empbatlc  as  laagnage  permits  [▲.  d. 
1682]  :  — 

Qne  Saint  Pierre  et  ses  snccessenrs,  ricaires  de  I^sus-Cbrist,  et  que  tonte 
rtglise  mdme,  n'ont  re^n  de  puissance  de  Dieu  qne  sur  lea  choees  spiritu- 
eOes  et  qui  oonoement  le  saint,  et  non  sur  les  dioses  tempordles  et  civiles  : 
lisus-ChTist  nous  apprenant  lui-mdme  que  son  rojaume  n'est  point  de  oe 
monde,  et,  en  nn  autre  endroit,  qu'il  faut  rendre  k  C^sar  ce  qui  est  k.C^sar, 
et  k  Dieu  oe  qui  est  k  Dieu.  •  .  .  Nous  d^clarons  en  cons^uenoe  que  les 
rois  et  lea  aoaTerains  ne  sont  soumis  k  aucune  puissance  eod^siastiqQe,  par 


102  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTUBT: 

of  right  put  forth  bj  Gregory  was  of  stapendong  height 
and  reach.  But  he  shrank  not  for  a  moment  from  the 
conflict  which  it  challenged.  Faith  in  the  Ohurch 
appeared  to  him,  as  in  fact  it  was  at  that  time  in  Europe, 
the  only  universal  unifying  force.  The  purified  Church 
was  not  merely  to  train  saintly  men  for  the  heavens,  it 
was  to  educate,  purify,  and  govern  by  its  law  the  nations 
on  the  earth*  He  wrote  to  the  legates  sent  by  him  to 
Oermany,  ^^You  know  that  it  appertains  to  the  provi- 
dential mission  of  the  See  Apostolic  to  judge  in  what- 
ever businesses  concern  Christian  commonwealths,  and 
to  regulate  them  by  the  dictates  of  righteousness. "  ^  He 
wrote  to  the  same  effect,  not  to  Henry  alone,  or  to  Philip 
First  of  Fnuice,  but  to  William  the  haughty  conqueror 
of  England,  whose  aid  he  desired,  whose  lack  of  ardor 
in  his  cause  he  reproved,  and  whose  severity  of  temper 
he  perfectly  knew.  To  him  he  compared  the  pontifi* 
cate  to  the  sun,  and  royalty  to  the  moon,  while  he 

Tordre  de  Diea,  dans  les  choses  temporeUes ;  qu'ils  ne  peuvant  6tre  dipo&is 
diractement  ni  indirectement  par  rautorit^  des  defis  de  Teliae ;  que  lean 
Sleets  ne  peuvent  6tre  dispeiiB^  de  la  soumiflsion  et  de  rob^iseance  qa'ila 
lear  doivent,  on  abeoua  du  serment  de  fid^t^ ;  et  que  cette  doctrine,  n^ 
oessaira  pour  la  tranqoiUit^  publique,  et  non  moins  ayantageose  k  I'l^liae 
qu'k  r^taty  doit  dtre  inviolablement  anivie,  comme  oonfonne  k  la  parole  de 
Dieu,  k  la  tradition  dea  saints  p^res,  et  auz  ezemplee  des  saints.  —  (Buvm 
ChxrigUs  de  Bossutt^  torn.  y.  pp.  386-386.     Paris  ed.,  1822. 

Bossuet's  snbseqnent  defence  of  the  Declaration  was  elaborate,  learned, 
and  very  eloquent ;  but  he  seems  to  have  shrank,  six  hundred  years  after, 
ftom  direct  collision  with  the  words  and  acts  of  Gregory. 

^  ScitiB  enim  quia  nostri  officii  et  apostolica  sedis  est  providential  ma- 
jora  Ecclesiarum  n^gotia  discutere,  et  dictante  justitia  definire.  Hoc 
autem  quod  inter  eos  agitur  negotium  tant»  grayitatia  eat  tantiqne  peri- 
culi»  ut  81  a  nobis  fherit  aliqna  occasions  neglectum,  non  solum  illis  et 
nobis,  sed  etiam  nniyersali  Ecclesia  magnum  et  lamentabUe  pariat  detri* 
mentum.  — JBpist.,  lib.  iv.  ep.  xziii. 

The  business  in  hand  at  that  time  was  to  decide  whether  Henry  or 
Badolph  ahould  be  Emperor  of  Germany  1 


1TB  BEYIYINO  UFB  AND  PBOIOSB.  108 

promiBed  to  the  successfal  and  masterfal  king  further 
increase  of  pow^r  as  the  reward  of  an  increase  of  piety.  ^ 

No  doubt  he  was  ambitious  of  success.  No  doubt 
what  Yillemain  has  excellently  described  as  ^^  the  clever 
instinct  of  power  "  [^  cet  habile  instinct  du  pouvoir ''] 
taught  him  that  such  fierce  domination  of  tone  would 
have  its  effect  on  the  stubborn  natures  which  he  ad- 
dressed But  he  certainly  seems  to  have  been  sincere 
in  his  primary  conviction  that  the  purified  Church 
should  govern  the  Continent,  govern  the  world;  and 
that  the  secular  order,  even  as  represented  by  conquer- 
ing kings,  should  be  subordinate  to  the  spiritual  which 
Christ  had  ordained,  of  which  the  Holy  Ohost  was  the 
perpetual  vivifying  energy,  and  of  which  it  had  come  to 
pass  that  he  for  the  time  was  the  consecrated  head. 

His  missionary  activities  went  on  all  the  time,  while 
he  was  contending  with  such  incessant  and  vehement 
vigor  against  the  devices  and  arms  of  Henry.  In  Hun- 
gary, Bohemia,  Denmark,  Norway,  Sweden,  his  efforts 
to  extend  Christianity  were  constant  He  sent  teach- 
ers, animated  by  his  contagious  enthusiasm,  to  those 
remote  and  inhospitable  countries.  He  sought  assidu- 
ously to  draw  young  men  from  them,  to  be  instructed 
at  Rome  in  learning  and  religion.  He  was  not  afraid  of 
the  fury  of  the  greatest  He  was  not  unmindful  of  the 
crimes  of  the  weaker.     The  Bishop  of  Cracow  had  been 

^  Sioat  enim  ad  mandi  pulchritadinem,  ocalis  carneis  diTereU  tern- 
poribnB  repnasentandaiD,  solem  et  lanam  omnibas  aliia  eminentiora  dispo- 
ndt  Inminaria,  aic,  ne  creatura,  quam  soi  benignitas  ad  imaginem  siiam  in 
hoc  mando  cnaveiat,  in  erronea  et  mortifera  traheretar  pericula,  providit 
in  apostolica  et  r^gxa  dignitate  per  divena  regeretar  officia.  Qua  tamen 
nugoffitatis  et  minoritatia  distantia  religio  sic  ee  movet  Christiana^  at  cnia 
et  diapenaatione  apoetolic»  dignitatis  post  Deam  gnbernetor  regia.  — OperOf 
Hb.  tIL  ep.  xxT. 

The  woxda  of  Qxegoxy  were  repeated  by  Innocent  Thirds  a  centuiy  ktsb 


\^ 


104  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTUBT: 

assassinated,  by  the  order  of  Boleslas,  king  of  Poland, 
whom  his  reprimands  had  offended.  Instantly,  from 
the  watchful  pontiff,  flashed  forth  an  interdict  on  the 
kingdom.  The  churches  were  shut  to  all  divine  offices, 
the  violent  king  was  deposed,  excommunicated,  driven 
from  his  kingdom,  and  in  his  flight  is  said  to  have  been 
killed  and  devoured  by  dogs.  Whatever  the  faults  of 
\  ' '  Hildebrand  were,  aside  from  the  prolific  primary  error 
1;,  '  ^  of  confounding  the  pontificate  with  Christianity,  it  can- 
not be  said  that  he  was  swayed  from  what  to  him  ap- 
peared his  just  purpose  by  any  threats  or  any  flatteries ; 
that  he  yielded  or  cringed  before  power;  that  he  bur- 
dened the  weak  because  they  were  weak,  or  tolerated 
and  pardoned  the  sinner  who  was  strong.  He  sacrificed 
the  dearest  ambition  of  his  life  —  the  initiation  of  a 
crusade  to  recover  Jerusalem,  which  he  had  hoped  to 
lead  in  person  —  to  his  determination  to  have  Europe 
compacted,  educated,  and  governed  by  a  purified  ChurdL 
Only  once,  I  think,  did  he  for  a  moment  relax  his  de- 
crees against  the  continuing  and  demoralizing  simony, 
or  on  behalf  of  clerical  celibacy.  Toward  the  end  of 
his  life,  when  the  difficulties  in  his  path  appeared  insur- 
mountable, when  it  looked  as  if  the  papacy  itself  must 
be  fatally  stricken  by  the  forces  against  it,  and  chaos 
must  follow,  he  undoubtedly  did  this,  allowing  a  tempo- 
rary suspension  of  the  rigor  of  his  rules.  ^  With  this  ex- 
ception he  held  to  his  standard  of  what  to  him  appeared 
the  purity  of  the  Church,  with  its  proper  lordship  over 
continent  and  world.     He  went  even  to  the  perilous 

^  His  letter  to  his  legates,  in  part,  lan  :  Quod  yero  ds  saoerdotilNis  inter- 
rogastifl,  placet  nobis  ut  impnesentianun,  torn  propter  popnlomm  torba- 
tiones,  tnm  etiam  propter  bononun  inopiam,  scilicet  quia  paudSBimi  sunt 
qui  fidelibus  Ghristiams  offida  religionis  peraolvant,  pro  tempom  rigoram 
canonicnm  temperando,  debeatis  sufferrs.  —  Opera,  lib.  ix.ep.iiL 


ITS  REYiyiNG  UFE  AND  PROMISE.  106 

extreme  of  implicitly  denying  the  objective  validity 
of  the  sacraments,  and  conditioning  their  virtue  on  the 
personal  character  of  the  officiating  priest,  when  he 
called  the  faithful  to  refuse  those  sacraments  as  admin- 
istered by  simoniacal  prelates,  or  by  those  whom  such 
had  ordained.^  The  consequences  of  this  came  after- 
ward, in  effects  from  which  Gregory  himself  might 
have  shrunk ;  but  at  the  time  he  did  not  hesitate.  He 
threw  his  whole  force,  to  the  last  atom,  into  the  con- 
test. Even  the  wide  disuse  of  religious  rites  did  not 
frighten  him.  He  summoned  the  people  to  take  part 
with  him  against  all  powers  in  Church  or  State  which 
did  not  submit  to  his  decrees,  even  if  under  the  terms 
of  such  decrees  the  new-bom  babe  received  no  baptism, 
the  penitent  sinner  no  absolution,  the  dying  no  saving 
viaticum.  He  was  determined  on  his  end,  and  so  far  as 
tiie  titular  emperor  was  concerned  it  seemed  in  January, 
A.D.  1077,  as  if  that  end  had  been  fully  attained. 

Excommunicated,  and  pontifically  deposed,  with  re- 
bellion constantly  widening  at  home,  deserted  and  ar- 
dently antagonized  by  his  mother,  perhaps  with  the 
superstitious  fears  natural  to  a  violent  and  undisci- 
plined mind  awakening  in  him,  Henry,  in  that  year, 

^  Anno  Domini  MLXXIY.,  Gregoriiu  sedit  in  cathedra  Bomana  annis 
doodecim,men8e  uno,  et  tribns  diebns,  qni  Hildebrandua  vocataa  antea  fuerat 
late  Papa  in  aynodogeneraU  simoniaooa  ezoommonicayit,  nxomtos  saoerdo- 
taa  a  divino  ranoTit  officio,  et  laicis  miaaas  eoram  audire  interdizit,  novo 
ezamplo  et»  at  mnltia  yisom  est»  inconaideiato  judicio,  contra  Banctomm 
patnm  sententiam,  qai  aoripsenint,  quod  aaciamenta  qu«  in  eccleaia  fiant» 
iMptisma,  chrisma^  oorpoa  Christi  et  nangnia,  Spirita  inyisibiliter  oo-oper- 
ante  eonmdem  aacramentomm  effectom,  sen  per  bonoe  sea  per  maloe  intra 
Dei  aceleaiani  dispenaentor ;  tamen  qnia  Spiritiui  Sanctns  mystice  ilia 
Tivificat,  nee  bononun  meiitis  amplificantm*,  nee  pecoatia  malonun  attenn- 
antor.  Sz  qna  re  tam  grave  oritur  acandalnm,  nt  nuUiua  luereeia  tempore 
flUDcta  eodesia  graviori  sit  schiamate  diadaaa.— Matt.  Pa&zb:  Cftfwi. 
Mn^wa,  ii  12 ;  an.  1074. 


106  THE  ELEVBMTH  CENTUBT: 

after  all  his  defianees,  was  reduced  to  the  memorable 
submission  at  Canossa,  the  story  of  which  has  never 
ceased  to  stir  men's  hearts  with  quite  opposite  emo- 
tions. No  picture  continues  more  distinct  on  the  annals 
of  the  past  Climbing  and  crossing  the  icy  Alps  in  the 
midst  of  winter, —  the  severest  winter  of  the  eleventh 
century,  when  nearly  all  the  vines  were  killed,  and 
when  the  Rhine  was  frozen  till  the  middle  of  April, — 
attended  only  by  the  queen,  their  son,  and  the  smallest 
unarmed  escort,  the  king  presented  himself  at  the  castle 
of  Canossa,  an  impregnable  fortress  built  on  a  rocky 
hill,  encircled  by  a  triple  wall,  in  which  Gregory  at  the 
time  was  staying.  The  place  is  now  in  ruins,  and  few 
travellers  pause  to  view  the  remaining  fragments  of 
mounds  and  walls  on  their  way  from  Beggio  to  Modena. 
But  here  was  then  a  famous  fortress,  apparently  of  ir- 
reducible strength.  For  three  days  the  humbled  king 
waited  in  the  space  between  the  first  and  second  walls, 
standing  barefooted  on  the  snow,  and  fasting  until  even- 
ing. On  the  fourth  day  he  was  admitted  to  the  pres- 
ence of  the  pontiff,  with  his  feet  still  bare,  in  a  peni- 
tential robe.  Casting  himself  on  the  ground  before 
Gregory,  he  entreated  his  pardon.  The  severe  condi- 
tions of  the  forgiveness,  with  the  consequent  loosing  of 
the  anathema,  had  already  been  accepted  by  Henry, 
and  the  absolution  followed.  Chanting  the  psalms 
"  Miserere  mei,  Domine  "  and  "  Deus  misereatur, "  the 
pontiff  struck  the  king  on  the  shoulder  with  a  slight 
switch  at  the  end  of  each  verse,  and  then,  after  prayer, 
resuming  his  mitre,  declared  him  absolved  and  fully 
restored  to  the  communion  of  the  Church.  He  then 
proceeded  to  celebrate  the  Eucharist,  inviting  the  king 
to  partake  with  him ;  and  then  it  must  have  b^en  that 
he  accepted  for  himself,  and  proposed  to  Henry,  the 


ITS  BETIVINO  LIFE   AND   PROMISE.  107 

tremendous  test,  as  it  appeared  to  them  both,  of  taking 
simultaneously  the  consecrated  wafer,  on  condition  that 
it  should  clear  the  recipient  of  the  crimes  imputed  to 
him  if  he  were  innocent,  or  that  the  Lord,  whose  body 
was  in  it,  should  strike  him  there  with  sudden  death  if 
he  were  guilty. 

Henry  had  broken  treaties,  would  break  them  again, 
as  if  they  had  been  spider-webs  on  his  path;  and  it 
is  not  probable  that  he  would  haye  demurred  to  any 
number  of  formal  oaths  attesting  his  innocence.  But 
he  shrank  appalled  before  that  awful  adjuration,  and 
evaded  the  test  He  thus  went  out  from  the  presence 
of  the  pontiff  apparently  absolved,  but  as  Gregory  is 
reported  to  have  said,  ^'  in  fact  more  accusable  than  he 
had  been ;  *'  ^  and  from  that  time  the  sword  never  de- 
parted from  his  house.  He  fought,  intrigued,  again 
called  a  council,  at  Brixen  in  the  Tyrol,  for  deposing 
the  Pope  and  electing  another.  Such  an  one  was 
elected, —  Ouibert,  Archbishop  of  Ravenna, — and  Henry 
conducted  him  with  an  army  to  Rome,  which  they  to- 
gether entered  in  triumph,  after  long  delays,  at  Christ- 
mas, A.D.  1088.    On  the  Palm  Sunday  following,  Ouibert 

1  Certe  obediens  erat  rex  Henrichas  apoetolics  anctoiitati,  quando 
pfomiserat  ad  omnia  qa»  jasta  easent  conaenaum  pnebere  Romano  pon- 
tifici,  .  .  .  donee  in  gratiam  cum  papa  rediit  et  ad  comprobandnm  eccle- 
iiaatic0  reconciliationis  teatimoninm  sacram  commonionem  corporis  et 
aaagninia  Domini  de  mann  eins  accepit,  mensam  cum  ipso  papa  adiit  ac 
deinde  dimissna  est  in  pace,  qnalem  scilicet  pacem  Judas  simulavit,  non 
qoalem  Chriatus  reliquit.  Nam  tunc  aderat  et  legatio  Sazonum,  hoetium 
scilicet  regis  et  Qregorianse  partis  fautorumi  et  rescripsit  eis  qassrentibus 
intemimpere  omnibus  roodis  initum  reconciliationis  pactum  :  N€  soUieiti, 
inqnit,  siMs,  qucniam  evlpabUiorein  eum  reddo  vobia,  —  Waltramub  :  IH 
UmtaU  SeOena  [cirea  1090],  lib.  ii.  15. 

Waltlam  makes  no  mention  of  the  test  proposed  by  Gregory  and  avoided 
by  Henry,  but  the  words  of  the  pontiff  cited  by  him  hare  in  that  their 
Etftnnd  ooeaaion  and  explanation. 


108  THE  ELEYENTH  CBNTUBT: 

was  installed  as  Pope  in  St  Peter ^s,  taking  the  title  of 
Clement  Third,  and  at  Easter  he  gave  to  Henry  the  im- 
perial crown.  Subsequently,  Rome  was  captured,  rav« 
aged  and  burned,  by  the  southern  Normans,  with  a 
multitude  of  Saracen  allies,  who  had  come  to  the  relief 
of  Gregory,  and  he  was  conducted  to  the  Latcran  palace. 
When  they  in  turn  left  the  ruined  city,  he  followed  them 
to  Salerno,  where,  as  I  have  said,  in  a.  d.  1085,  he  died. 
But  his  system  survived  him ;  and  Henry  never  recov- 
ered from  the  disasters  which  under  iiie  imperious  and 
inplacable  pontiff  had  fallen  upon  him.  His  sons  suc- 
cessively rebelled  against  him ;  his  wife,  the  empress, 
accused  him  before  a  council  of  what  appear  wholly 
incredible  crimes ;  at  times  he  was  on  the  edge  of  sui- 
cide; and  at  last  his  unhappy  and  turbulent  life  was 
closed  at  Lidge,  a.d.  1106,  after  a  reign  of  fifty  years, 
and  his  diadem  and  sword  were  sent  to  the  son  who 
was  at  the  time  approaching  him  for  battle. 

Subsequently  to  his  day  no  pontiff  ever  sought  the 
imperial  sanction  of  his  election.  It  is  a  significant 
illustration  of  the  vast  momentum  which  Gregory  had 
given  to  the  system  identified  with  his  name,  that  even 
in  the  synod  convened  by  Clement  Third  at  Rome,  while 
Gregory  was  practically  a  prisoner  in  St  Angelo, —  a 
synod  composed  of  those  friendly  to  the  Emperor  and 
hostile  to  Gregory, —  the  principles  and  maxims  which 
the  latter  had  announced  were  essentially  accepted. 
The  excommunication  of  the  Emperor  was  declared 
irregular,  because  he  had  not  been  heard  in  reply  to 
the  charges  against  him.  But  the  right  of  the  pontiff 
to  excommunicate  kings  was  left  unchallenged.  His 
maxims  against  simony,  and  the  marriage  of  priests, 
were  also  repeated  by  Clement,  though  he  carefully  af- 
firmed the  validity  of  the  sacraments  as  independent  of 


ITS  REVIVING  LIFE  AND  PROMISE.  109 

the  character  of  the  priest  Morally,  if  not  physically. 
Hildebrand  had  conquered.  His  austere  character,  his 
daring  spirit^  the  temper  of  the  times,  the  inveterate 
tendencies  which  led  all  peoples  to  look  to  Rome  for 
light  and  law,  the  craving  for  some  securely  established 
unity  on  the  Continent,  had  given  to  his  plans  a  power 
and  predominance  which  continued  for  centuries,  though 
he  himself,  with  a  tragic  justice,  must  die  in  exile 
without  the  sight  After  him,  the  only  unity  ever  looked 
for  in  Europe  was  a  imity  under  the  papacy.  Of  an 
all-embracing  secular  empire  no  man  anywhere  longer 
dreamed.^ 

Following  his  death,  after  the  brief  pontificate  of 
Victor  Third,  one  of  his  friends,  another  of  those 
friends,  Otho,  Bishop  of  Ostia,  who  had  been  trained 
at  the  same  monastery  of  Clugni,  who  had  been  one  of 
his  legates  and  confidants,  and  who  had  been  named  by 
him  as  fit  for  the  succession,  was  made  pontiff,  with  the 
title  of  Urban  Second ;  and  he  it  was  who,  while  in- 
sisting as  strenuously  as  had  Gregory  himself  on  what 
to  both  appeared  the  necessary  reform  and  supremacy 
of  the  Church,  was  able  to  carry  out  the  immense  con- 
ception of  a  European  crusade  to  conquer  for  Chris- 
tendom the  holy  places  of  the  Gospels.  This  had  been, 
as  I  have  said,  a  favorite  and  an  animating  design  with 

1  Nous  sommes  accoutnm^s  k  nous  reprtenter  Or^goire  VII.  comme  an 
bonune  qui  a  Tooln  rendre  toutes  choaes  immobiles,  comme  on  adversaire 
dn  deTeloppement  intellectuel,  da  progrts  social,  comme  nn  homme  qoi 
pvetendait  retenir  le  monde  daas  on  syst^me  stationnaire  oa  retrograde. 
Rien  n'eat  moins  vrai,  Mesaiears  ;  Oregoire  VII.  etait  an  reformateur  par 
la  Toie  da  deapotisme,  comme  Charlemagne  et  Pierre-le-Grand.  II  a  voula 
reformer  T^ise,  et  par  rfigliae  la  society  civile ;  y  introduire  pi  as  de 
morality,  plas  de  justice,  plas  de  r^gle ;  i1  a  yoala  le  faire  par  le  Saint- 
Si^  et  k  son  profit  —  Guizot  :  Bisi.  de  la  Civil,  en  Europe,  pp.  178,  179. 
Paris  ed.,  1846. 


110  THE  EXiETENTH  CENTUBY: 

Gregory,  who  had  pablicly  announced  it  in  a  circular 
letter  to  the  faithful  as  early  as  a.  d.  1074,  and  who  had 
especially  asked  the  support  for  it  of  Henry  of  Germany. 
The  plan  in  his  time  could  not  be  realized.  The  suc- 
cess of  Urban  in  carrying  it  out  is  of  itself  a  demon- 
stration of  the  immense  impulse  which  had  come  to  the 
Church,  with  the  almost  incalculable  advance  achieved 
in  the  general  European  spirit  of  energy  and  courage. 
From  Europe  under  the  foul  domination  of  Benedict 
Ninth  to  Europe  imder  the  pupil  of  Hildebrand,  the 
change  is  almost  as  great  as  from  one  planet  to  an- 
other; and  the  finally  successful  effort  to  combine  sev- 
ered and  hostile  States  for  the  vast  and  costly  common 
enterprise  in  the  East  shows  how  the  invigorated  Church 
was  renewing  the  public  unity  which  after  Charlemagne 
had  seemed  hopelessly  lost. 

The  outline  of  the  remarkable  story  may  be  rapidly 
recalled.  Ten  years  after  the  death  of  Gregory,  a.d. 
1095,  a  vast  assembly  of  thousands  of  the  clei^  and 
ten  thousands  of  the  laity  was  gathered  at  Piacenza 
— the  Italian  city  lying  midway  between  Milan  and 
Parma  —  to  meet  the  new  pontiff.  No  roof  being  vast 
enough  to  cover  the  assembly,  its  meetings  were  held 
in  open  fields  outside  the  city.  The  envoys  of  the 
Eastern  Emperor  were  present,  to  ask  the  aid  of  West- 
em  Christendom  against  Saracen  and  Turk.  The  hearts 
of  the  excitable  multitudes  were  deeply  stirred  by  pa- 
thetic appeals,  and  the  hour  for  the  movement  appeared 
to  have  come.  But  Urban,  with  adroit  sagacity,  de- 
ferred its  full  inauguration  to  a  time  and  a  place  yet 
more  opportune.  In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  he 
met  a  still  larger  assembly,  at  Clermont  in  Auvergne. 
Peter  the  Hermit  had  previously  traversed  the  king- 
dom, with  his  terrible  narrative  of  the  murder  and 


ITS  BBYIYING  UFE  AND  PROMISE.  Ill 

onfarage  inflicted  on  pilgrims  when  seeking  the  holy 
sepulchre  of  the  Lord,  and  with  fierce  exhortations 
founded  upon  the  bloodj  story.  Urban  had  given  him, 
a  year  before,  pontifical  sanction  for  his  mission.  The 
impetuous  French  people,  always  responsive  to  high 
and  remote  imaginative  conceptions,  had  been  tumul- 
tuously  aroused  by  his  words,  and  were  ready  to  be 
swept  into  a  general  delirium  of  passion.  The  country 
was  volcanic,^  the  council  full  of  irrepressible  fire;  and 
when  Urban,  himself  a  Frenchman,  ascended  the  lofty 
temporary  scaffold  and  began  his  address,  it  seemed  to 
those  who  heard  him  as  if  the  inspiration  of  God  were 
as  plainly  present  as  it  had  been  at  Pentecost.  Three 
reports  of  his  speech  have  remained,  but  all  agree  in 
the  substance  of  his  appeal.  It  was  for  the  rescue  from 
defiling  infidel  possession  of  the  royal  city  which  the 
Divine  Redeemer  had  made  illustrious  by  His  residence, 
had  hallowed  by  His  passion,  had  purchased  by  His  cross, 
had  gloriously  crowned  by  His  resurrection.  When  he 
closed — this  ruler  of  kings,  this  official  head  of  the  re- 
combined  Christendom,  this  earthly  vice-gerent  of  God 
—  with  the  thought  that  they  were  not  really  called  to 
surrender  home-ties  in  this  far  expedition,  since  to  the 
Christian  all  the  earth  is  a  place  of  exile  while  in  an- 
other and  better  sense  all  the  earth  is  his  home,  and 
with  the  august  pontifical  promise  that  leaving  patri- 
monies here  they  should  attain  better  in  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  and  that  dying  in  this  service  they  should 

1  Michelet  has  described  it  well :  Yaste  incendie  ^teint,  atgonrd'hni 
pari  presque  partont  d'nne  forte  et  rade  v^g^tation.  Le  noyer  pivote  snr 
le  basalte,  et  le  bl^  genne  sur  la  pierre  ponce.  Les  feax  int^rieurs  ne  sont 
pas  tellement  assonpis  qne  certaine  vallee  ne  fume  encore,  et  que  les  iUmffi* 
da  Mont-Bor  ne  rappellent  la  Solfatare  et  la  Grotte  du  Chien.  Y illes  noires, 
blties  de  lave,  Clermont,  Saint-Flour,  etc.  —  Eld,  de  France,  torn.  iL  pp. 
SS^Sd.    IWsed.,  1886. 


112  THE  ELEVENTH  GENTUBT: 

liye  forever,  with  their  sins  washed  away,  in  the  man* 
sions  of  the  Blessed, —  the  uniyersal,  passionate  cry, 
^  €rod  wills  it !  God  wills  it ! "  broke  from  the  assembly 
as  of  old  the  flame  and  molten  lava  had  burst  from  the 
cloven  hills  around  them.  Bed  cloths  and  stuffs  were 
not  abundant  enough  to  furnish  crosses.  All  over 
France,  all  over  Europe,  swept  the  swift,  impassionat- 
ing  contagion;  and  the  power  of  the  Pontiff,  of  the 
Church  represented  by  him  before  Europe,  rose  as  in  a 
moment  to  such  a  pitch  of  eminence  and  of  splendor  as 
Gregory  Seventh  in  his  wildest  dreams  could  scarcely 
have  imagined.  It  was  in  large  part  the  outcome  of 
his  work,  though  he  had  seemed  to  struggle  vainly  for 
the  effect,  to  die  at  last  in  painful  discomfiture.  His 
intrepid  spirit  and  indomitable  zeal  for  the  mastery  of 
the  Church  over  disunited  States  presided  still  in  the 
councils  of  Christendom. 

The  effect  of  the  crusade  thus  initiated  was  to  stimu- 
late, to  a  degree  before  unexampled,  the  general  mind 
of  Western  Europe ;  to  unite  the  peoples  in  sympathetic 
alliance  for  a  magnificent  enterprise,  on  behalf  of  a 
remote  and  ideal  end ;  to  bring  forth  whatever  chival- 
ric  quality  was  common  to  diffeVent  classes  in  the 
State,  and  to  loosen  in  a  measure  the  constraining 
bonds  of  that  severing  feudalism  which  had  not  only 
manacled  but  practically  destroyed  general  society.  It 
made  the  peasant  as  well  as  the  prince  the  soldier  of 
the  cross.  It  compelled  a  wide  and  beneficent  distri- 
bution of  estates.  It  gave  increase  of  wealth  to  mer- 
chants and  artisans,  who  provided  the  vast  equipment 
for  the  hosts.  It  expanded  and  lifted  the  popular 
thought,  before  wholly  occupied  with  local  affairs  and 
with  neighboring  strifes.  It  brought  Europe  and  Asia 
face  to  face,  as  till  then  they  had  not  been  since  the 


"1 


ITS  BEYIYINO  UFE  AND  PROMISE.  118 

early  Empire  was  divided.  It  tended  in  many  ways  to 
make  the  last  decade  of  the  eleventh  century  a  widely 
different  period  from  either  of  the  three  gloomy  decades 
with  which  it  had  begun.  A  wholly  new  freedom  and 
energy  of  movement  became  evident  in  it^  prophetic  of 
things  still  better  to  come. 

After  Urban  Second  had  passed  away,  closing  eleven 
years  of  pontifical  service,  another  friend  and  pupil  of 
Hildebrand,  also  for  a  time  a  monk  at  Olugni,  was 
placed  upon  the  papal  throne,  under  the  title  of  Paschal 
Second;  and  he  it  was  who  saw  Henry  Fourth  com- 
pelled at  last,  by  the  treachery  of  his  son,  t^  seek  final 
release  from  the  ban  of  the  Church,  and  to  surrender 
his  empire.  But  the  same  pontiff  saw  also  the  son  and 
successor  of  the  dethroned  monarch  master  of  Rome, 
after  a  destroying  march  through  Italy,  master  of  his 
own  person,  of  the  Vatican  and  St  Peter's ;  he  saw  him- 
self compelled  to  crown  the  conquering  monarch,  and 
to  make  with  him  a  solemn  treaty  in  which  much  was 
yielded  for  which  Gregory  had  tenaciously  fought 
Oermany,  in  other  words,  had  not  been  crushed  by  all 
the  calamities  which  she  had  suffered.  Hildebrand 
had  builded  better  than  he  knew.  The  recoil  of  his 
blows  had  been  equal  to  the  stroke.  The  people  had  i^ 
been  aroused  by  the  fierce  democracy  of  his  appeal, 
while  the  Church  had  been  partially  purified;  and 
though  for  a  time  it  seemed  as  if  the  papacy  would 
become  too  strong  for  civilization,  in  the  final  effeet 
it  had  to  accept  the  imperative  demands  of  secular 
advance  and  social  order.  ^ 

1  To  many  tiionghtlnl  uid  diBpaMdonate  minds  even  the  gigantic  power 
wielded  by  the  popes  daring  the  middle  ages  will  appear  justifiable  in  itself 
(thoai^  they  will  repudiate  the  false  pretensions  on  which  it  was  founded, 
and  the  false  opinions  which  were  associated  with  it),  since  only  by  such 

8 


\ 


114  THE  ELEYBaVTH  CENTUBY: 

Other  movements,  doctrinal,  spiritual,  rather  than 
strictly  ecclesiastical,  belong  also  to  the  close  of  this 
century;  and  other  great  names  give  it  lustre  in  his- 
tory. The  impulse  which  wrought  in  it  had  become 
inherent,  was  no  longer  imported  and  dependent  It 
was  general,  therefore,  not  local ;  and  it  found  expres- 
sion in  many  strong  characters. 

Peter  Damiani,  whom  I  have  already  mentioned,  be- 
longs in  his  public  life  chiefly  to  the  third  quarter  of 
the  century,  haying  died  in  a.d.  1072;  but  his  influence 
continued  after  his  death,  and  indeed  was  long  a  pres- 
ence in  the  Church.  Of  somewhat  narrow  mind,  no 
doubt,  and  of  a  harsh  and  vehement  temper,  but  faithful 
to  his  convictions,  fearless  of  opposition,  while  ascetic 
in  his  habits,  and  intensely  zealous  for  the  purity  of  the 
Church,  he  rose  from  low  conditions  in  life  —  according 
to  some  a  deserted  child,  compelled  to  turn  swineherd 
— to  the  high  rank  of  bishop  and  cardinal,  the  offices 
being  thrust  upon  him  without  his  wish,  and  almost 
against  his  final  consent  His  aims  were  well-nigh  fa- 
natically practical;  yet  he  made  himself  familiar,  as 
abundantly  appears,  with  the  Tiatin  classics.  He  loved 
solitude  better  than  society,  yet  he  took  without  shrink- 
ing a  prominent  and  a  dangerous  part  in  public  affairs 
when  summoned  by  the  Pope.  The  eulogist  of  her- 
mits, the  inventor  of  a  new  and  severe  form  of  penance, 
the  intrepid  critic  and  censor  of  pontiffs  when  they 
seemed  to  him  to  need  it,  laying  down  at  last  his  car- 
dinal's hat  to  become  abbot  of  a  monastery,  he  left  be- 
hind him  a  lesson  of  character  and  of  self-subduing 

a  proYidential  coDcentratioii  of  authority  coald  the  Chnrch,  hamanly 
speaking,  haye  bmved  the  stonDS  of  thoee  ages  of  anarchy  and  yiolenoe.  — 
Bp.  LiOHTTOOT :  Appendix  to  Oomm,  en  Phmppiam,  p.  244.  London  ed^ 
1879. 


I  ITS  BEVIYING  LIFE  AND  PBOMISB.  115 

example  more  important  and  fruitful  than  any  lesson 
of  his  treatises  or  his  sermons,  his  letters,  or  his  lives 
of  the  saints.  A  translated  stanza  of  the  celebrated 
hymn,  ^  De  gloria  et  gaudiis  Paradisi,"  which  was  prob- 
ably composed  by  him  on  a  suggestion  from  the  wri- 
tings of  Augustine,  gives  perhaps  as  clearly  as  anything 
the  key  to  his  career :  — 

"  Giant  me  vigor,  while  I  labor 

In  the  ceafielew  battle  pressed, 
That  Thou  mayeat,  the  conflict  orer. 

Grant  me  everlasting  rest ; 
That  I  may  at  length  inherit 

Thee,  my  Portion,  ever  blest."  ^ 

The  vehemence  of  the  warrior,  the  narrowness  of  the 
monk,  were  blended  in  him  with  the  ardent  faith  and 
hope  of  the  Christian. 

Lanfranc,  whose  name  will  be  memorable  in  history 
while  the  English  annals  continue  to  be  read,  was  of 
the  same  century,  born  a.  d.  1005,  and  dying  in  England 
A.D.  1089.  Bom  in  Pavia,  of  a  family  which  gave  him 
opportunities  for  distinction,  having  been  educated  for 
the  bar,  having  followed  for  some  time  the  profession 
of  an  advocate,  and  having  himself  subsequently  founded 
an  important  seminary  at  Avranches  in  Normandy,  he 
at  length  sought  admission  to  the  monastery  at  Bee, — 
^ihe  Bee,"  more  properly,  the  name  coming  from  a 
rivulet  flowing  near, —  and  there  adopted  fully  the  mo- 
nastic life.  Ascetic  in  spirit,  but  courtly  in  manner,  of 
wide  and  cultivated  practical  sagacity,  with  the  highest 
repnte  for  logic  and  learning,  he  became  prior  of  the 
monastery,  and  then  of  the  larger  one  at  Caen.     At 

^  The  entire  hymn,  of  sixty-one  lines,  is  found  in  DanieVs  "Thesanrus 
Hymnologicns,'*  torn.  i.  pp.  116,  117.  Leipsic  ed.,  1855.  It  is  there  at- 
tributed, however,  to  Aogaatine. 


116  THB  ELEVENTH  CENTURY: 

length  he  was  called  by  William  the  GonqueFor,  who 
knew  and  honored  his  remarkable  capacity  and  char- 
acter, to  be  archbishop  of  Canterbury ;  and  at  the  com- 
mand of  Alexander  Second,  he  accepted  the  office.  To 
him  both  the  Church  and  the  State  of  England  were 
largely  indebted  for  the  influence  which  he  successfully 
exerted  on  William  and  his  successor.  The  genius  of 
the  statesman  was  combined  in  him  with  a  devout  piety. 
The  comments  upon  the  epistles  of  Saint  Paul  attri- 
buted to  him  show  attentive  Biblical  studies.  His 
contest  with  Berengarius,  on  the  real  presence  of  the 
Lord  in  the  Eucharist,  exhibits  the  eager  and  skilled 
theologian.  But  his  personal  spirit  was  the  instrument 
of  his  noblest  achievements.  The  character  which  all 
recognized  in  him,  with  the  restraint  and  dignity  of  his 
life,  rebuked  the  dissoluteness,  encouraged  the  aspira- 
tion for  purity,  of  both  of  which  the  age  was  full. 

A  greater  thinker,  a  more  profound  theologian,  suc- 
ceeded him  in  the  See  of  Canterbury, —  the  illustrious 
Anselm,  the  memory  of  whom  those  widely  severed 
from  the  communion  of  which  he  was  the  glory  still 
hold  in  their  hearts.  Also  of  Italian  parentage,  born 
in  Aosta,  under  the  shadow  of  the  Alps,  ▲.d.  1038,  he 
also  died  at  Canterbury,  seventy-six  years  after^  a.d. 
1109*  After  a  beautiful  childhood,  in  which  he  thought 
heaven  to  be  upon  the  top  of  the  mountains  to  whose 
shining  splendor  he  looked  up,  and  to  whose  summits 
he  went  in  his  dreams  to  see  the  Lord,^  by  the  death  of 

1  Ingrediens  itaqae  pner,  a  Domino  yocator.  Accedit,  atque  ad  ped«i 
ejus  sedet.  Interrogatur  jacttnda  affabilitate  qais  sit,  yel  undo,  quidve 
relit.  Respondet  ille  ad  interrogata,  jnzta  qttod  rem  esse  aeiebat.  Tunc 
ad  imperiam  Domini  panis  ei  uitidissimus  per  daptferom  affertar,  eoqiie 
coram  ipso  reficitar.  Mane  igitur  cum  quid  viderit  ante  oculos  mentis 
redaceret,  sicut  paer  simplex  et  innocens,  se  veraciter  in  coslo  et  ex  pane 


IT8  BETtVING  LtFfi  AND  PROMISK.  117 

his  mother  '^the  anchor  of  his  heart  was  lost,  and  it 
was  thrown  almost  a  wreck  on  the  waves  of  the  world  *'  ^ 
Keenly  alive,  however,  to  the  attractions  of  study  and 
of  thought,  and  with  the  impulse  to  a  nobler  spiritual 
life  striving  against  whatever  had  been  irregular  in  his 
habit,  he  also  came  to  the  monastery  of  Bee,  became  its 
prior,  and  afterward  its  abbot;  and  finally,  after  the 
death  of  Lanfranc,  followed  him,  with  great  personal 
reluctance,  to  the  ecclesiastical  throne  of  England. 
The  sixteen  years  of  his  archiepiscopal  life  were 
years  of  struggle,  vicissitude,  and  at  times  of  apparent 
defeat  An  important  part  of  them  was  passed  in  exile. 
But  he  served  England  as  nobly  as  any  native  hero 
could  have  done,  through  his  intrepid  and  masterful 
spirit,  which  the  furious  will  of  William  Rufus  could 
not  bend,  while  his  large  and  rich  intellectual  work  has 
made  the  Church  of  Christ  from  that  day  to  this  his 
constant  debtor. 

He  has  justly  been  called  ^the  Augustine  of  the 
Middle  Age. "  Not  surpassing  others  of  his  time,  per- 
haps, in  mere  dialectical  acuteness  and  force,  he  had 
an  aptitude  which  no  other  showed  for  intent,  con- 
tinuous, and  profound  meditation  on  the  sublimest  and 
most  difficult  themes.  His  renowned  ontological  argu- 
ment for  the  existence  of  Ood  —  not  wholly  original 
with  himself,  but  completing  and  surpassing  other  forms 
of  the  argument — still  conmiands  the  admiration  even 
of  those  who  do  not  wholly  accept  it,  while  to  not  a  few  of 
the  greater  philosophical  minds  of  modern  time  it  has 


DcMnini  refectnm  faiaae  cndebat,  hocqae  coram  aliis  ita  fite  pnbliea 

nbat.  ^  ILldmbr  :    FUa  S.  An$$lmi,  lib.  L 

No  doubt  £adm«r  heard  the  story  from  Anselm  himaelt 

1  Defuncta  yero  ilia,  illico  nayia  cordis  ejus,  quasi  anchora  perditfti  in 

flaetoa  Mooli  pane  tota  dilapaa  eat  —  iW.  -    -" 


118  THE  ELETENTH  CENTURY: 

seemed  sufficient  On  the  concord  betw^een  Divine  fore- 
knowledge and  human  freedom  he  largely  meditated, 
and  to  the  work  of  showing  the  essential  harmony  be- 
tween them  he  gave  enthusiastic  endeavor;  while  his 
famous  treatise,  ''  Cur  Deus  Homo, "  which  aims  to  set 
forth  the  moral  ground  ot  the  incarnation,  and  to  pre- 
sent a  sufficient  exposition  of  the  atonement,  makes 
him  pre-eminent  among  the  Christian  thinkers  of  his 
time.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  it  revolutionized 
the  thought  of  Europe  on  that  majestic  and  vital  theme. 
To  the  end,  his  mind  was  engaged  in  like  manner.  As 
Palm  Sunday  dawned,  while  his  brethren  were  sitting 
around  him,  when  one  of  them  said,  **  Lord  Father,  we 
apprehend  that  you  are  about  to  leave  the  world  for 
your  Lord's  Easter  court,"  his  reply  was,  "If  this  be 
His  will,  I  shall  gladly  obey  it;  but  if  He  chooses 
rather  that  I  shall  remain  among  you  a  little  longer, 
until  I  am  able  to  solve  a  question  on  which  I  am  reflect- 
ing, on  the  origin  of  the  soul,  I  shall  thankfully  receive 
it,  since  I  know  not  whether  any  one  will  finish  the 
work  when  I  am  gone."  ^  A  profound  thinker,  an  illus- 
trious teacher,  a  mighty  kindler  of  thought  in  others, 
austere  in  life,  uncompromising  in  discipline,  yet  won- 
derfully sweet  and  affectionate  in  sympathy,  affable,  gra- 
cious, of  a  supreme  piety, — ready  to  take  hell,  with 
unblemished  purity,  rather  than  to  be  thrust  into  heaven 
while  stained  with  sin,^  —  it  is  no  wonder  that  men 

^  Repondit :  Equidem  si  voluntas  ejas  in  hoc  est,  voluntati  ejas  Ubens 
parebo.  Venim  si  maUet  me  adhac  inter  tos  saltern  tarn  din  manere, 
donee  qatsstionem,  qoam  de  anima  origine  mente  revoWo,  absolvere  poasem, 
giatioaas  acciperem,  eo  quod  nescio  ntrum  aliquls  earn  me  defuncto  sit  abeo- 
Inturos.  —  £admkr  :   Viia  S.  Anulmi,  liK  ii. 

*  Conscientia  mea  teste  non  mentior,  quia  Mepe  ilium  sub  yeritatis  tes- 
timonio  profitentem  audivimus,  quoniam  si  hinc  peccati  horrorem,  bine 
inferni  dolorem  corporaliter  cemerety  et  neoessario  uni  eorum  immetgi 


ITS  BEYIVING  LIFE  AND  PBOMISB.  119 

loved  him  as  few  have  deserved  to  be  loved ;  that  mira- 
cles were  attributed  to  him  in  life,  and  that  beautiful 
portents  were  believed  to  iLttend  his  burial.  It  was  not 
till  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century  that  he  was  for- 
mally canonized.  It  was  not  till  the  last  century  that 
his  name  was  enrolled  on  the  pontifical  list  of  Church 
authorities.  But  centuries  before,  Dante  had  seen  him, 
jou  remember,  in  his  vision  of  Paradise,  among  the 
spirits  of  light  and  power  in  the  sphere  of  the  sun. 
With  prophets,  theologians,  jurists,  he  saw  him;  with 
Thomas  Aquinas  and  Hugo  of  St  Victor,  with  Bona- 
Tentura  the  "seraphic  doctor,"  with  Nathan  the  Seer, 
with  the  sainted  Chrysostom.  Certainly  the  age  was 
neither  intellectually  nor  morally  sterile,  nor  wanting 
in  strong  spiritual  impulse,  which  could  present  such  a 
product  as  the  genius  and  spirit  of  Anselm. 

Nor  merely  by  the  appearance  of  illustrious  men  is  that 
new  impulse  which  wrought  in  Europe  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  eleventh  century  made  apparent  Discussions  arose, 
and  were  eagerly  prosecuted,  which  before  would  have 
seemed  impossible.  Institutions  were  founded,  or  were 
vastly  enlarged,  from  which  subsequent  times  took  in- 
struction and  courage.  The  doctrine  of  the  Real  Pres- 
ence of  the  Lord  in  the  wafer  came  to  the  front,  and 
keenly  stirred  the  minds  of  many.  Berengarius  of  Tours, 
following  in  the  line  of  John  Erigena,  maintained  that 
the  body  of  the  Lord  was  there  spiritually  only,  not  cor- 
poreally, to  be  received  by  the  heart  not  by  the  mouth, 
the  bread  and  the  wine  continuing  in  their  substance  un- 
changed. His  opinion  was  not  approved,  but  condemned. 
Lanfranc  wrote  forcibly  against  it  At  a  synod  at 
Rome,  A.i>.  1050,  and  at  subsequent  synods  and  coun- 

deberet ;  prins  infemnm,  qoam  peccatum,  Appeteret  —  Eadmxe  :  Vita  & 
Jtmlmi,  iL  15. 


120  THE  ELETEMTH  CENTUBT: 

cils  on  to  A.  D.  1079,  the  opinion  attributed  to  him  was 
contradicted  and  anathematized,  and  he  was  more  than 
,  once  in  peril  of  his  life.  But  the  fact  that  the  question 
was  mooted  at  all,  with  the  further  facts  that  argument 
was  employed  against  him,  that  many  others  agreed 
with  his  thought,  and  that  no  great  final  severity  waa 
exercised  toward  him  though  he  had  spoken  contemptu- 
ously both  of  pontiffs  and  of  the  Roman  Church, — these 
show  a  positive  moral  advance  from  the  dreary  tor- 
por of  the  previous  century.'  The  appearance  and 
propagation  of  even  extreme  heretical  opinions,  at  the 
theological  school  at  Orleans  and  elsewhere,  show  the 
same  prophetic  ferment  in  the  mind  of  the  West  It 
can  hardly  be  reckoned  without  significance  that  in 
this  century  first  came  to  European  hands,  in  cotton 
paper,  a  new  instrument  for  recording  and  communi- 
cating thought,  in  place  of  the  scarce  and  costly  parch- 
ment Its  use  was  at  first  exceptional  and  infrequent ; 
but  more  and  more  it  was  sure  to  give  extended  facil- 
ities for  chronicles,  correspondence,  and  the  careful 
exhibition  of  whatever  men  believed. 

Convents  were  multiplied  and  enriched  in  tiie  cen- 
tury, in  consequence,  partly,  of  the  large  gifts  bestowed 
upon  them  by  those  who  in  its  earlier  years  had  ex- 
pected the  near  end  of  the  world.  The  Grande  Char- 
treuse, near  Grenoble,  was  thus  founded  by  Bruno  of 
Cologne,  A.  D.  1084 ;  the  Abbey  of  Citeaux,  by  Robert 
of  Molesme,  under  the  protection  of  the  Duke  of  Bur- 
gundy in  A.  D.  1098.  The  magnificent  Abbey  of  St 
Benignus,  at  Dijon,  had  been  founded  earlier,  and  was 
already  extensive  and  powerful,  while  Clugni  was  a 

Mt  is  to  be  remembered  that  not  nntU  a.d.  1215,  under  Inoocent 
Third,  did  the  doctrine  of  Transabstantiation  become  %  formnlated  dogma 
of  the  Church. 


ITS  REyiriNG  UPE  AND  PROMISB.  121 

renowned  seminary  for  bishops  and  pontiffs.  The  Ab- 
bey of  St  Evroult,  made  famous  by  Ordericus  Yitalis, 
began  in  the  middle  of  the  century;  and  even  the  an- 
cient monastery  of  Monte  Cassino  only  finished  its 
magnificent  church  in  a.d.  1070. 

Meantime,  all  over  the  Continent,  other  churches 
were  arising,  more  vast  and  stately  than  before  had 
been  known,  in  consequence  of  the  recent  riches  con- 
tributed for  them.  The  fears  of  the  vicious  had  con- 
spired with  the  devotion  of  the  pious.  The  prophecy 
ascribed  to  Merlin  had  been  accomplished,  and  gold 
had  been  extracted  from  both  the  nettle  and  the  lily. 
As  Baoul  Olaber  said,  after  the  threatened  day  of  doom, 
all  Christian  peoples  seemed  to  contend  with  each  other 
which  should  raise  the  most  superb  churches.  ^^  It  was 
as  if  the  whole  world  had  thown  off  the  rags  of  its  an- 
cient time,  and  had  come  to  apparel  itself  in  the  white 
robe  of  the  churches.**^  St.  Mark's,  at  Venice,  was 
not  finished  till  the  end  of  the  century,  to  be  by  us 
freshly  admired  after  eight  hundred  years.  The  cathe- 
dral of  Pisa,  wonderful  alike  for  its  grand  proportions 
and  the  charming  completeness  of  its  melodious  details, 
begun  in  a.i>.  1015,  was  also  finished  with  the  century. 
The  cathedrals  of  Siena,  Modena,  Parma,  and  other 
Italian  cities,  belong  to  the  same  age ;  while  in  north- 
em  Europe  the  new  and  urgent  spiritual  forces  were 
equally  breaking  into  sudden  exhibition  in  immense 
and  lovely  structures.  The  church  at  Preyburg  in 
Baden,  in  which  Bernard  afterward  preached  the  cru- 

1  Igitur  iofra  sapradictam  millesimum  tertio  JAxn  fere  imminente  anno, 
oontigit  in  nniveno  pene  terrarum  Orbe,  pnecipae  tamen  in  Italia  et  in 
GaUiia,  innovari  Ecclesiarnm  Basilicas.  .  .  .  iEmnlabator  tamen  qnsque 
gens  Christicolaram  adversus  alteram  decentiore  fmi ;  erat  enim  instar  ae 
si  mnndns  ipse  ezcntiendo  semet,  rejecta  retnstate,  passim  candidam  £e* 
dssiarum  Tsatem  indueret.  —  J?u<.  tut  Ump.,  lib.  iii.  cap.  iv. 


122  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTUBT: 

sade,  belonged  to  this  period.  Strasburg,  Mayence, 
TrdveB,  WormB,  Basel,  Brussels,  Dijon,  bloomed  into 
the  beauty  of  their  superb  churches.  The  cathedral  of 
Ghartres,  always  since  renowned  in  Europe,  with  its 
pointed  arches,  flying  buttresses,  and  the  marvellous 
glass  which  even  the  fires  of  Revolution  have  spared, 
was  begun  about  ▲.  d.  1060,  though  principally  fin- 
ished a  century  later.  The  wonderful  Abbey  Church  at 
Clugni,  580  feet  in  length,  120  in  width,  continuing 
almost  to  our  time,  was  commenced  in  ▲.  d.  1089,  while 
the  full  reach  of  its  massive  magnificence  was  only 
subsequently  attained.  The  cathedrals  at  Autun  and 
Poictiers,  the  Abbey  Church  at  Y^zelai,  with  St  Ste- 
phen's at  Caen,  and  many  others,  are  of  the  same  time. 
All  northern  Europe  was  flowering  into  Christian  ar- 
chitecture, delicate  and  mighty,  as  Alpine  slopes  with 
sudden  exuberance  clothe  themselves  in  wealth  of 
blooms  when  the  icy  fetters  have  been  removed. 

Education  revived,  and  the  old  plans  of  Charlemagne 
were  once  more  put  into  wide  operation,  as  schools 
were  established  in  important  cathedral  towns  for  the 
instruction  of  youth,  with  the  training  of  men  for  the 
ofiices  of  the  priesthood.  Libraries  of  manuscripts  be- 
gan to  be  gathered  more  numerously  and  largely ;  and 
from  the  collections  started  at  this  time  the  modern 
world  derives  not  a  few  of  its  most  prized  vellums. 
One,  at  least,  of  the  sweetest  of  the  mediaeval  hymns 
is  attributed  to  this  period, — the  "  Veni  Sancte  Spiri- 
tus."  The  Breviary  took  its  completed  form  lifter  the 
middle  of  the  century,  from  which  the  Anglican  Prayer- 
book  has  derived  much  of  its  dignity  and  charm.^    A 

1  The  histoiy  of  the  Breviary,  not  only  from  the  time  that  it  came  as  a 
hook»  80-called,  into  use,  about  a.  d.  1050,  but  from  the  very  commence- 
ment of  the  gndoal  process  of  its  formation,  is  a  great  desideratum,  per- 


ITS  BEVIVINO  UFB  AND  PROMISE.  128 

new  fervor  in  preaching,  expressing  new  fervor  of 
thought  and  zeal,  prepared  the  waj  for  that  preaching 
in  the  vernacular  among  different  peoples  which  after- 
ward became  a  general  practice.  The  study  of  jurispru^ 
dence  received  at  the  same  time  a  memorable  impulse. 
It  was  not  until  A.  D.  1135  that  the  city  of  Amalfi  was  cap- 
tured by  the  Pisans,  after  which  the  famous  copy  of  the 
Pandects  of  Justinian  now  in  the  Laurentian  Library 
at  Florence,  and  formerly  shown  there  as  an  almost 
sacred  book,  was  transferred  to  Pisa.  But  the  pictur- 
esque story  which  made  that  the  source  of  all  other 
copies  of  the  Pandects,  and  of  the  culture  which  came 
to  Europe  from  the  revived  study  of  Roman  Law,  was 
long  since  disproved  by  Muratori  and  Savigny.  Ir- 
nerius,  with  whom  learned  investigation  of  the  laws  of 
Justinian  appears  to  have  commenced,  was  already  lec- 
turing in  Bologna  at  an  early  date  in  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury. Other  teachers  were  associated  with  him.  Many 
students  were  gathered  around  them.  Glosses  were 
made,  or  marginal  interpretations  of  obscure  words  and 
sentences  in  the  text ;  and  not  only  the  relations  of  men 
in  society  became  in  a  measure  defined  and  liberalized, 
but  the  general  teaching  mind  of  the  Continent  took  en- 
largement and  increase  of  light  from  this  ampler  study 
of  that  ancient  jurisprudence  which  had  expressed  the 
public  ethical  reason  of  the  Empire. 

Poetic  feeling  began  at  the  same  time  to  press  toward 
harmonious  expression,  among  peoples  before  unfamil- 


haps  the  great  desideratum  in  ritualistic  works :  the  treatise  of  Granoolaa 
supplying  bat  a  yery  small  part  of  what  is  wanted.  .  .  .  While  the  beauty 
of  our  Prayer-book  is  bnt  the  faint  shadow  of  the  beanty  of  the  Breviary, 
it  would  be  much  easier  to  correct  the  former  by  ampUficlition  than  the 
latter  by  diminution.  —  Dr.  J.  M.  Nsale  :  Enay»  en  IMurgiology^  pp^ 
%  4.    London  ed.,  1867. 


' 


124  THB  ELEVENTH  CENTURT: 

iar  with  it  and  dwelling  widely  apart  The  Troobadour 
period  in  France  was  already  begun.  That  which  fol- 
lowed in  Grermany  was  still  in  the  future,  since  the 
Hohenstauffen  princes,  under  whom  it  chiefly  appeared, 
only  came  to  the  throne  in  the  following  century.  Bat 
already  the  earliest  Minnesingers  were  chanting  their 
lays  of  faith  and  love  and  knightly  valor, — of  nature  in 
her  delightful  aspects,  of  womanhood  in  its  sweet  ma- 
jesty, and  of  the  comic  and  tragic  in  human  life.  In 
Provence,  still  earlier,  such  singers  had  appeared. 
William  of  Guienne,  whose  lyric  art  was  famous  in 
his  time,  was  born  in  a.d.  1070;  and  Courts  of  Love, 
at  which  bards  recited  in  lyric  competition,  were  held 
in  Provence  and  in  Catalonia  before  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury. The  Chanson  de  Roland^  reported  to  have  been 
sung  by  Taillefer  before  William  of  Normandy  and  his 
army,  was  evidently  familiarly  known  before  that  time. 
One  cannot  yet  trace  the  origin  in  (rermany  of  the  Nibe- 
lungenlied,  or  of  the  Gudrun,  and  the  subsequent  parts 
of  the  Helden-Buch;  but  certainly  the  legends  which 
found  in  them  their  composite  expression  had  long  be- 
fore become  current  among  the  people,  as  had  been  that 
of  the  Beineke  Fuchs.^    It  is  indeed  nowise  impossible 

^  Thb  Middle  High-German  Epic  (the  Nibelangenlied)  is  like  an  old 
church,  in  the  building  of  which  many  architects  have  successively  taken 
part,  some  of  whom  have  scrupulously  adhered  to  the  original  designs  of 
their  predecessors,  while  others  have  arbitrarily  followed  their  own  devices ; 
little  minds  have  added  paintings,  scrolls,  and  side-wings,  and  Time  has 
thrown  over  the  whole  the  grey  veil  of  age,  so  that  the  general  impression 
is  a  noble  one.  .  .  .  The  whole  may  have  been  finished  in  about  twenty 
years,  from  1190  to  1210.  .  .  .  Even  those  who  believe  in  the  stnf^e 
authorship  of  the  poem  must  acknowledge  that  the  poet  derived  the  sub- 
stance of  his  work  from  older  lays,  .  .  .  and  that  the  internal  disparities 
are  explained  by  the  various  songs  made  use  of  by  the  author.  .  .  .  The 
author  of  the  Nibelungenlied  cannot  be  known.  ~  W.  Scherer  :  Hitt, 
Chm,  LiL,  vol.  i.  pp.  102-108.     Oxford  ed.,  1889. 


ITS  BEVITING  LIFE   AND  PBOHISB.  125 

that  parts  of  the  famous  ^^  Hero  Book  "  may  have  been 
coimected  as  has  sometimes  been  surmised,  through  a 
survival  of  the  fittest,  with  Charlemagne's  collection 
of  popular  heroic  songs.  The  most  ancient  Icelandic 
Edda  goes  back  probably  to  the  same  century.  It  will 
not  be  denied,  therefore,  that  true  poetry  was  there, 
though  that  in  whose  equally  exquisite  substance  and 
form  the  following  times  have  found  delight  does  not  yet 
appear.  The  bold  and  brilliant  image  of  Garlyle  finds 
constant  illustration  in  literary  history :  *^  Action  strikes 
fiery  light  from  the  rock  it  has  to  hew  through ;  poetry 
reposes  in  the  skyey  splendor  which  that  rough  passage 
has  led  to."  1 

In  a  word  it  may  be  said,  certainly,  with  no  hesita- 
tion, that  the  eleventh  century,  after  the  first  third  of  it 
had  passed,  constituted  a  period  not  of  passive  transi- 
tion, but  of  active  and  powerful  transformation,  through 
which  the  peoples  of  Europe  passed  from  the  foul  dark- 
ness of  the  tenth  Christian  age  into  the  comparatively 
clearer  light  and  more  healthful  air  of  those  which  fol- 
lowed.    The  reaction  in  the  Church  toward  purity  in 

The  ttoiy  [of  Gadran]  Attained  its  fullest  deTelopment  in  tlie  Nether- 
Undsy  probably  in  the  eleventh  century.  .  .  .  The  stoiy  was  known  in 
BaTaria  before  the  year  1100»  and  was  treated  in  a  celebrated  poem  not 
presenred  to  us,  but  referred  to  by  the  clerical  poets  of  the  twelfth  century. 
About  the  year  1210  a  poet  of  remarkable  talent  made  it  his  theme.  His 
work,  like  the  songs  of  the  Nibelungen  epic,  was  afterwards  much  added 
to  by  other  poets,  and  we  have  it  in  this  enlarged  form  in  a  late  manu- 
script —  Ibid.,  p.  125. 

The  court  of  the  Hohenstaufen  was  the  centre  of  life  for  the  whole 
southwest  of  Germany.  .  .  .  The  minstrels  were  probably  well  reoeived 
there  thit>ngfaout  the  twelfth  century ;  the  only  one  whom  we  know  by 
name,  a  certain  Heinrich  der  Olichezare,  made  translations  from  the  French, 
at  the  commission  of  an  Alsatian  nobleman,  and  in  this  way  produced  the 
oldest  Qerman  poem  on  Beineke  Fuchs.  —  Ibid.,  p^  146. 

1  HisodlAnies,  iv.  894.    Boston  ed. 


126  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTUBT: 

officials,  and  toward  its  enfranchisement  from  secular 
powers,  or  even  an  asserted  supremacy  over  them  which 
was  to  be  conditioned  upon  such  purity,  contributed,  as 
I  think,  to  this  effect.  It  was  the  most  signal  failure 
in  history,  so  far  as  it  aimed  at  complete  papal  domi- 
nation over  States.  But  for  the  time  it  gave  a  new  and 
needed  sense  of  unity  to  Europe,  in  which  was  the  con- 
dition of  further  progress.  Under  theocratic  forms  it 
revived  and  surpassed  the  earlier  Empire.  It  made  peo- 
ples more  free,  in  the  consciousness  of  constant  possible 
access  to  a  superior  spiritual  tribunal,  while  it  made 
kings  less  sharply  tyrannic.  When  the  first  most  im- 
passioned crusade  had  come  to  its  triumphant  success 
in  the  capture  of  Jerusalem,  on  Friday,  the  fifteenth 
of  July,  in  the  last  year  of  the  century, — at  the  same 
hour  of  the  day,  it  was  reverently  remembered,  at  which 
the  Lord  had  been  crucified, — the  fruit  of  it  was  not 
principally  in  the  aggrandizement  of  priesthood  or  of 
pontiff,  but  in  the  new  relations  which  peoples  profess- 
ing the  Christian  faith  came  thenceforth  to  sustain  to 
each  other;  in  widened  thought,  as  distant  regions 
were  brought  nearer;  in  an  educated  capacity  for  com- 
bined effort  in  immense  and  costly  enterprise.  Then 
followed,  in  natural  sequence,  the  more  generous  and 
elaborate  cultivation  of  knighthood,  the  freshly  reli- 
gious and  consecrated  tone  taken  by  chivalry,  the  dis- 
tinct loosening  of  feudal  bonds,  the  wide  and  useful 
exchange  of  estates.  It  was  not  lost,  that  blood  poured 
out  on  the  sands  of  the  East.  Europe  gained  from  it 
what  it  had  not  expected,  but  what  was  worth  more  to 
it  than  would  have  been  the  possession  for  all  time  of 
all  holy  places. 

Ladies, and  Gentlemen:  I  have  tried  thus,  however 
imperfectly,  to  outline  before  you  the  period  which  pre« 


ITS  BEYITINO  UFE  AND   PROMISE.  127 

ceded  the  lifetime  of  Bernard,  that  we  may  hare  before 
U8  as  plainly  as  possible  the  condition  to  which  the 
Europe  of  his  experience  had  at  length  been  brought 
through  the  slow  travail  of  suffering  centuries.  It  is 
in  that  Europe  of  the  twelfth  century  —  after  Hilde- 
brand,  after  Urban,  when  the  first  crusade  had  stirred 
with  vast  whirl  European  society  —  that  we  are  to  place 
him  and  his  work.  I  can  only  hope  that  by  this  pro- 
longed though  rapid  r^sum^  I  may  have  helped  to  a 
clearer  apprehension  of  the  particular  environment  of 
his  life.  Heavy  and  noisome  shadows  from  the  past 
brooded  over  it  still,  as  I  need  not  remind  you.  Ele- 
ments of  fierce  evilness  contended  in  it  with  incipient 
forces  of  good.  Its  annals  clash  with  shock  of  arms ; 
they  ring  with  outcries  of  defiance  or  despair;  they 
reverberate  with  the  quarrels  of  high  officers  in  the 
Church;  they  record  intrigues,  stratagems,  combats, 
and  they  echo  anathemas.  The  crudest  thought,  the 
most  childish  superstition,  confront  us  often  in  places 
of  authority,  wielding  at  will  destroying  weapons. 
Poverty  was  unbounded,  and  the  privilege  of  power 
was  commonly  reckoned  the  opportunity  to  oppress. 
It  was,  beyond  doubt,  a  hard  century  to  live  in.  Ex- 
cept for  the  deep  instinct  of  life  which  calamities  had 
not  crushed,  and  which  even  the  ruder  forms  of  Chris- 
tianity always  cherish  and  renew,  it  may  well  seem 
to  us  that  the  burdens  of  life  would  have  been  to  many 
intolerably  severe,  that  suicide  as  a  refuge  would  have 
come  to  be  familiar. 

But  after  all,  as  we  step  forth  into  it  from  the  terri- 
ble period  which  had  followed  the  end  of  Charlemagne's 
empire,  we  are  greeted  with  many  encouraging  signs  of 
recent  advance  and  of  probable  progress.  The  seem- 
ingly mad  and  hopeless  chaos  of  the  tenth  century,  and 


128  THE  ELEVENTH  CENTURY: 

of  part  of  the  eleventh,  is  at  any  rate  behind  us.  The 
Empire,  though  again  re-erected  in  name,  has  lost  its 
former  ecumenical  character;  it  no  longer  extends 
across  the  Continent,  and  the  vast  area  formerly  em* 
braced  in  it  is  being  broken  up  into  separate  kingdoms, 
politically  divided,  though  morally  allied  Larger  free- 
dom of  development  has  thus  come  to  each,  while  the 
higher  influences,  subordinated  before  to  imperial  will, 
have  henceforth  a  broadened  range.  A  conmion  eccle- 
siastical life  pervades  the  kingdoms.  Territorial  impe- 
rialism has  practically  given  place  to  a  more  commanding 
empire  over  souls.  Militaiy  establishments  ai-e  not  as 
conspicuous  and  controlling  as  they  were,  and  moral 
forces  have  new  opportunity.  The  popes  have  come  to 
be  decent  persons,  and  in  many  dii^ctions  the  exercise 
of  their  power  is  not  unhelpful  to  general  welfare. 
There  is,  on  the  whole,  an  increasing  sensibility  in  the 
popular  mind  to  what  is  high  and  rare  in  character,  an 
increasing  spirit  of  confident  hope  for  better  times,  an 
increasing  readiness  to  follow  the  lead  of  those  in  any 
station  in  whom  benevolence,  piety,  learning,  and  cour- 
age are  plainly  united,  while  they  are  masters  as  well 
of  the  mystery  and  power  of  eloquent  speech.  The 
need  of  such  men  was  never  greater  than  at  that  time 
in  Europe.  The  opportunity  before  them  was  certainly 
more  ample  than  it  had  been  in  perhaps  any  century 
before;  and  we  cannot  be  mistaken  in  feeling  that  a 
true  genius  for  moral  conunand  then  appearing,  and 
working  in  sympathy  with  the  new  age,  must  find  open- 
ings, and  be  conscious  of  incentives,  hardly  surpassed 
even  in  later  and  pleasanter  centuries. 

Wide  general  tendencies  are  coming  before  us  to 
partial  exhibition,  in  which  one  sees  prophetic  indica* 
tions.     The  huddled  huts  around  feudal  castles  are  bo- 


ITS  BEYIVING  LIFE   AND  PBOMISE.  129 

ginning,  at  least,  to  grow  toward  villages,  which  are  to 
ripen  into  communes,  and  to  furnish  the  nests  of  future 
liberties.  Halls  like  that  of  William  Rufus,  rising  at 
Westminster,  though  designed  at  first  only  for  princely 
entertainments,  are  destined  to  become  the  memorable 
Bcenes  of  much  that  is  grandest  in  the  history  of  states. 
The  life  of  the  Cid,  which  closed  with  the  eleventh  cen- 
tury,^ and  which  gave  inspiration  to  the  oldest  Spanish 
poem,  which  distinguished  critics  have  also,  you  know, 
pronounced  the  finest,^  shows,  through  whatever  subse- 
quent embellishment,  the  signally  romantic  and  chiv- 
alrous temper  toward  which  men's  eyes  were  fondly 
turned.  A  new  expectation  was  beginning  to  be  mani- 
fest in  the  spirit  of  society,  as  well  as  in  the  Church ; 
and  with  it  came,  not  suddenly  but  in  gradual  develop- 
ment, new  wideness  of  purpose,  a  fresh  courage,  more  re- 
liance on  moral  forces,  a  more  animating  hope.  There 
was  certainly  a  turn,  distinctly  apparent,  toward  better 
times ;  and  it  may  not  seem  without  significance  that  it 
was  at  the  close  of  the  eleventh  century  in  its  last  de- 
cade that  the  pontiff.  Urban  Second,  ordered  the  bells 

1  At  Valencia,  A.  D.  1099. 

*  It  la,  indeed,  a  work  which,  aa  we  read  it,  atira  ns  with  the  spirit  of 
the  times  it  describes ;  and  as  we  lay  it  down  and  recollect  the  intellectual 
condition  of  Europe  when  it  was  written,  and  for  a  long  period  before,  it 
seems  certain  that,  daring  the  thousand  years  which  elapsed  from  the  time 
of  the  decay  of  Greek  and  Roman  culture  down  to  the  appearance  of  the 
**  Divina  Commedia,"  no  poetry  was  produced  so  original  in  its  tone,  or  so 
foU  of  natural  feeling,  picturesqueness,  and  energy.  — Ticknob  :  JETis^.  of 
4»n.  LiL,  Tol.  i.  pp.  22,  28. 

Sanchez  is  of  opinion  that  it  [the  poem]  was  composed  about  the  middle 

of  the  twelfth  century,  some  fifty  yeara  after  the  death  of  the  Cid ;  there 

are  some  passages  which  induce  me  to  believe  it  the  work  of  a  contempo- 

niy.    Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  unquestionably  the  oldest  poem  in  the 

Spanish  language.    In  my  judgment  it  is  as  decidedly  and  beyond  aU 

comparison  the  finest  —  Southbt  :  OhronieU  of  the  Oid^  p.  9.    London 

ed.»lS08. 

9 


180  THE  BLEVE!NTH   CBNTUBT. 

to  be  rung  in  tiie  churches  before  Bunriee  and  Bunset, 
to  call  the  people  to  give  thanks  and  to  pray.  So  the 
"  Angelus  "  and  the  ^  Ave  Maria,  *'  the  chimes  so  called 
from  the  first  words  of  the  orisons  appointed,  came  to 
be  widely  heard  in  Europe.  They  rang  out  the  old 
time,  and  they  rang  in  the  new.  It  is  beneath  their 
prophesying  music  that  we  come  at  last  to  the  more 
limited  personal  theme  henceforth  to  engage  us ;  for  it 
was  at  almost  exactly  the  same  time,  a.d.  1091,  that 
the  life  of  Bernard  began  in  Burgundy. 


LECTURE  in. 


BEKNAItD,  m  HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS. 


LECTURE  IIL 

BEBNARD  OF  CLAIBYAUX:   HIS  PEBSONAL  CHABA0TEBI8TICB. 

I  VENTURE  to  hope  that  in  the  preceding  lectures  some 
things  have  become  apparent  which  are  important  to  a 
fair  estimate  of  Bernard  and  his  work ;  these  three,  at 
least:  that  a  distinct  change  toward  better  things  had 
got  itself  established  before  the  close  of  the  eleventh 
century,  giving  reasonable  hope  of  a  subsequent  slow 
but  progressive  improvement  in  the  moral  life  of  Europe 
and  its  social  conditions;  that  this  change  had  taken 
its  rise,  and  continued  to  have  the  centre  of  its  support, 
not  in  any  plan  of  nobles  or  kings,  or  of  the  peoples  who 
were  passive  before  them,  but  in  men  of  tiie  Church, 
who  had  at  heart  the  interests  of  Christ's  kingdom  as 
they  understood  that,  and  who  were  jojrfuUy  ready  to 
strive  and  suffer  on  its  behalf;  and  therefore  that  a 
man  of  consecrated  spirit,  coming  to  his  place  in  the 
following  century,  if  endowed  with  genius  for  com- 
mand, intense  convictions,  an  energetic  and  inspiring 
will,  would  have  opportunities  for  a  wider  work  than 
had  been  possible  before.  Ambitions  were  still  fierce, 
passions  savage,  oppressions  enormous,  wrongs  innu- 
merable ;  but  reaction  had  come  from  long  periods  of 
terrific  decadence.  Tendencies  toward  a  brighter 
future  were  now  positively  inaugurated  in  Western 


134  BERNARD   OF  CLATRVAUX  : 

Christendom.  There  was  more  of  just  hopefulness  for 
the  victory  of  good  forces.  A  general  and  influential 
European  opinion  was  coming  to  be  possible,  if  not 
already  beginning  to  be  manifest  And  one  who  should 
stand  apart  from  his  contemporaries  in  unique  spiritual 
quality  and  power,  whether  with  or  without  any  distin- 
guished titular  rank,  might  thereafter  impel  and  guide 
with  new  efficiency  both  those  in  high  station  and  the 
common  populations. 

If  these  things  are  as  evident  to  you  as  to  me,  the 
purpose  of  the  previous  lectures  has  been  accomplished, 
and  we  are  ready  to  set  the  slender  and  shining  figure 
of  Bernard  amid  the  times  ±o  which  he  gave  elevation 
and  lustre.  The  impulse&-mich  moved  him,  the  ends 
which  he  sought,  even  the  methods  by  which  he  pursued 
his  unselfish  aims,  will  become  more  clear  to  our  ap- 
prehension ;  and  some  of  the  facts  in  his  extraordinary 
life,  which  otherwise  we  might  be  tempted  perhaps  to 
remit  to  the  realm  of  legend  or  romance,  will  stand  be* 
fore  us  in  definite  outline,  in  the  unprismatic  li^t  of 
history. 

He  was  bom,  as  I  have  said,  in  Bui^ndy,  at  his 
father's  castle  of  Fontaines,  two  miles  or  so  from  the 
city  of  Dijon,  in  the  year  a.  d.  1091.  He  was  named, 
probably,  for  his  mother's  father,  Bernard,  the  feudal 
lord  of  Mont  Bar,  a  few  miles  distant. 

The  province  of  Burgundy  was  at  that  time,  as  since, 
as  Michelet  has  said,  ^^  a  goodly  land,  where  cities  put 
vine  branches  into  their  coats-of-arms,  where  every- 
body calls  everybody  else  brother  or  cousin, —  a  country 
of  good  livers  and  of  joyous  Christmases. "  ^  Its  ver- 
durous slopes  and  sunny  plateaux  have  been  the  birth- 
place of  men  and  women  whose  eloquence  in  speech 

1  Hut.  de  Fruic«,  torn.  ii.  p.  98.     Paria  ed.,  1835. 


HIS  PEOKSONAL  CHARACTERI8TIG8.  185 

or  whose  singalar  grace  and  oharm  in  writing  have 
adorned  the  literature,  and  in  a  measure  have  shaped 
the  spirit,  of  the  French  people.  Bossuet  was  bom 
there, — the  skilful  disputant,  the  voluminous  author, 
the  counsellor  of  kings,  and  perhaps  the  most  eloquent 
preacher  in  France  after  Bernard.  Buffon  was  bom 
there,  whose  wide  research  and  poetic  intuition  of 
natural  law  made  an  era  in  the  annals  of  physical 
science,  and  whose  name  is  familiar  wherever  the  sci- 
ence is  pursued.  Madame  de  S^vign^  was  probably 
bom  there,  at  the  Gh&teau  de  Bourbilly,  whose  spir- 
ited letters — playful,  piquant,  affectionate,  thoughtful 
— have  been  a  delight  to  successive  generations.  Ore- 
billon  the  elder,  whose  success  as  a  tragic  poet  exas- 
perated Voltaire,  was  bom  at  Dijon.  So  was  Piron, 
whose  witty  epigrams  were  famous  in  their  time. 
Diderot  was  bom  a  few  leagues  away;  while,  in  more 
recent  times,  Lamartine  was  a  Burgundian,  who  so 
surprisingly  combined  the  poet  and  historian  with  the 
practical  statesman  and  the  popular  leader,  as  was  a 
little  later  Edgar  Quinet,  the  enthusiastic  interpreter 
of  the  German  mind  to  the  French,  the  brilliant  essay- 
ist and  lecturer  upon  modem  civilization.  The  skies 
of  Burgundy  have  thus  for  centuries  ripened  wits  as 
well  as  wines;  and  the  order  of  the  Golden  Fleece, 
instituted  there  three  centuries  after  Bernard,  for  the 
glory  of  knighthood  and  of  the  Church,  only  fairly 
represented,  in  name  at  least,  the  wealth  and  the  warmth 
of  tiie  prosperous  province. 

The  immediate  political  relations  of  the  province 
when  Bernard  was  born  were  with  the  French  king- 
dom, the  other  parts  of  the  earlier  kingdom  of  Bur- 
gundy, or  Aries,  having  been  detached  from  it,  and  a 
descendant  of  Hugh  Capet  being  its  powerful  local  sov« 


136  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX  : 

creign.  Eight  countshipB  —  of  Dijon,  Mftcon,  GhftlonB* 
"  Bur-Sadue,  Auxonne,  S^mur,  Nevers,  Auxerre,  and 
Gharollais  —  were  included  in  it;  and  the  dukes  of 
Burgundy,  through  the  extent  and  richness  of  their 
territory,  as  well  as  by  hereditary  royal  relationship, 
were  the  most  powerful  peers  in  France.  They  were 
not  merely  prudent  in  counsel  and  brave  in  battle, 
but,  according  to  the  standard  of  the  times,  they  were 
distinctly  religious  men.  One  of  them,  Hugh  First,  a 
little  before  the  birth  of  Bernard,  had  determined  to 
abdicate  his  ducal  authority,  transferring  it  to  his 
brother,  and  retiring  to  the  monastery  of  Clugni;  on 
occasion  of  which  came  a  letter  of  sharp  reproof  to  the 
abbot  from  Gregory  Seventh,  denouncing  him  for  con- 
senting to  take  their  protector  from  such  multitudes  of 
the  poor,  and  summoning  against  him  their  sighs  and 
tears,  with  an  apostolic  precept^  The  brother  who 
succeeded  Hugh  became  one  of  the  founders  of  the 
abbey  of  Citeaux,  and  died  at  Tarsus  while  on  a  jour- 
ney to  Palestine.  One  of  his  descendants  took  active 
part  in  the  subsequent  crusade;  he  built  the  famous 
Sainte  Chapelle  at  Dijon,  in  fulfilment,  it  is  said,  of  a 
TOW  made  by  him  when  smitten  by  tempest ;  he  at  last 
died  at  Tyre,  in  a.d.  1102. 

By  rivers  and  roads  communication  was  easy  with 
all  parts  of  France ;  Paris  was  less  than  two  hundred 
miles  away ;  while  with  Dauphin^,  Provence,  the  Lyon- 

1  Tolisti  vel  recepisti  ducem  in  Cloniacenaem  quietem,  et  feciati  at 
centum  millia  ChristiaDoram  careant  caatode.  Quod  si  nostra  exfaortatio 
apad  te  parum  valuit,  et  apostolicie  sedis  pneceptum  in  te  obedientiam 
non  invenit,  car  gemitus  pauperam,  lacrymae  viduaram,  devastatio  ecclesi- 
aram,  clamor  orphanomm,  dolor  et  mnrmur  sacerdotnm  et  monachonim 
te  non  termeninti  ut  iUud  quod  Apostolus  dicit  non  postponeres,  videlicet : 
C^ritaa  qua  sua  sunt  non  qucerit.  .  •  .  Hec  ideo  dicimus,  quia,  quod 
▼iz  aliquis  prinoeps  bonus  invenitur,  dolemos.  —  OperOf  lib.  vi  ep.  zyiL 


HIB  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  187 

nais,  though  the  old  govenmiental  relations  had  ter- 
minated, there  continued  special  acquaintance  and 
correspondence.  The  Northern  and  the  Southern  dia- 
lects—  the  langue  d'oil  and  the  langue  d'oc,  which 
two  centuries  later  became  thoroughly  interfused  in  the 
common  French  language  —  were  both  understood  and 
used  in  Burgundy,  though'  the  Southern  idioms  were 
specially  familiar;  and  it  had  at  the  same  time  certain 
particular  relations  to  Spain,  inasmuch  as  the  son  of 
one  of  its  dukes  had  married  the  daughter  of  Alfonso, 
emperor  of  Castile  and  Leon,  and  had  received  from 
him  the  countship  of  Portugal.  The  effect  of  this  was 
to  make  the  Burgundians  habitually  familiar,  as  other- 
wise they  might  not  have  been,  with  the  land  of  the 
Cid,  and  to  maintain  among  them  a  special  degree  of 
military  excitement  Out  of  this  relation  grew  events 
in  which  Bernard  had  afterward  lively  interest.  Such 
was  then  the  province  into  whose  ruddy  and  riant  life, 
as  the  eleventh  century  was  drawing  to  its  close,  he 
was  bom. 

His  father,  Tescelin,  was  a  knight  of  experience  and 
distinction,  descended  from  the  counts  of  Chfttillon, 
accustomed  from  youth  to  military  service,  and  still 
actively  occupied  in  it.  But  both  he  and  his  wife  be- 
longed evidently  to  that  class  of  persons,  not  few  in 
number  we  may  hope  in  the  darkest  times,  of  whom 
Luther  speaks  in  his  commentary  on  Paul's  letter  to 
the  Gralatians:  ^Some  there  were,''  he  says,  ^'whom 
Ood  called  by  the  text  of  the  Gospels,  and  by  baptism. 
These  walked  in  simplicity  and  humbleness  of  heart, 
thinking  the  monks  and  friars,  and  such  only  as  were 
anointed  of  the  bishops,  to  be  religious  and  holy,  and 
themselves  to  be  profane  and  secular,  not  worthy  to  be 
compared  unto  these.      Wherefore,  finding  in  them- 


188  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUX  : 

flelves  no  good  works  to  set  against  the  wrath  and 
judgment  of  God,  they  did  fly  to  the  death  and  passion 
of  Christy  and  were  saved  in  this  simplicity/'^  Of 
Tescelin  it  is  related  that  while  noble  in  descent  and 
rich  in  possessions,  he  was  afiFable  in  manner,  a  great 
lover  of  the  poor,  an  assiduous  cultivator  of  piety,  with 
an  extraordinary  zeal  for  justice,  so  that  he  was  wont 
to  wonder  that  it  should  seem  hard  for  any  to  observe 
justice  toward  others,  especially  that  they  should  be 
detained  from  it  by  either  fear  or  love  of  gain«  He 
was  the  bravest  of  soldiers,  yet  shrank  from  the  praises 
which  others  sought  He  never  took  up  arms  except 
for  the  defence  of  his  own  territory,  or  at  the  call  of 
his  feudal  lord  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  with  whom  he 
was  on  intimate  terms ;  and  with  him  he  never  went 
into  battle  without  gaining  the  victory.'  It  is  particu- 
larly related  of  him  by  another  of  the  early  biographers 
of  Bernard  that  having  become  engaged  in  controversy 
with  a  man  inferior  to  himself  in  birth  and  in  property, 
when  the  question  was  to  be  decided  according  to  cus- 
tom by  a  combat  of  arms,  and  the  day  had  been  fixed, 
Tescelin,  mindful  of  the  Golden  Rule,  though  the  more 
skilful  of  the  two  in  the  use  of  weapons,  and  expecting 
the  victory  which  would  bring  him  large  advantage, 

^  Comm.  on  cfaa|>.  ii.  vs.  16. 

*  Ent  aatem  Tir  iste  genera  nobilis,  poaseaaonibus  divei^  siuLTis  mori- 
bos,  amator  pauperam  mazimos,  sommna  pietatia  cultor,  et  incredibUem. 
habena  jostitie  zelnm.  Deniqae  et  mirari  aolebat,  qnod  multis  oneroaoni* 
esae  Tiderat  eerrare  jnatitiam  ;  et  niaxime  (adveraua  quos  ampUna  moTe> 
batar)  qnod  ant  timore,  ant  cnpiditate  desererent  juatitiam  Dei.  £rat  qui- 
dem  milea  fortiaaimoa,  aed  non  minori  atudio  laudea  ipae  fugiebat,  qnam 
cttteri  captare  videantur.  Nunquam  aimia  nana  eat,  niai  ant  pro  defen* 
aione  terns  propria,  aut  cum  domino  ano,  duoe  acilicet  BnxgondiB,  coi 
plnrimum  famiUaris  et  intimna  erat ;  nee  aliqnando  fuit  cum  eo  In  beUo» 
quin  victoria  ei  proveniret.  —  Opera  S.  £em,,  yoL  aec,  Vita,  iiL  ool.  847&. 
Fkria  ed.,  1839. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  189 

made  peace  with  his  adversary,  and  relinquished  all  that 
had  been  in  dispute.  Remembering  the  sharp  contrast 
between  this  action  and  the  temper  of  the  age,  one 
does  not  wonder  that  the  monkish  chronicler  was  moved 
to  add,  ^^  0  magna  pietas,  magna  viri  dementia ! ''  ^  Cer- 
tainly a  profound  religious  sensibility  appears  in  Tes- 
celin,  in  energetic  activity,  and  his  whole  spirit  is 
shown  in  harmony  with  that  of  the  son  whose  wider 
renown  has  caused  his  name  to  be  remembered. 

But  the  mother  of  Bernard,  Aletta,  or  Aldthe,'  was 
the  parent  to  whom  he  undoubtedly  was  most  indebted 
for  the  fine  and  rare  properties  of  his  spirit,  and 
whose  intense  devotional  temper  he  most  distinctly 
reproduced. 

We  greatly  err  if  we  conceive  of  that  time,  rude  as 
it  was,  as  one  in  which  womanhood  attracted  no  rever- 
ence, and  Christian  women  had  no  places  of  honor. 
The  instance  of  Matilda,  ^  the  Great  Countess ''  as  she 
was  called,  should  alone  be  sufficient  to  dispel  this 
impression.  That  intimate  friend  and  high-hearted 
champion  of  Gregory  Seventh,  who  listened  to  her 
counsel  when  he  would  to  no  other,  herself  a  fervent 
devotee  of  the  Church,  yet  administering  great  afiFairs 
of  state  with  wisdom,  foresight,  and  a  singular  cour* 
age,  familiar  with  whatever  of  knowledge  and  art  bo- 
longed  to  her  century,  and  speaking  French,  German, 
Proven9aI,  as  if  either  had  been  her  native  tongue,  yet 
more  remarkable  than  for  all  things  else  for  her  daunt- 
less consecration  to  what  to  her  was  the  righteous 
cause,  —  it  is  no  wonder  that  knight  and  soldier,  as 
well  as  prelate,  priest,  and  monk,  revered  and  obeyed 

1  Opeim  S.  Bern.,  vol.  sec.,  Vita,  iv.  col.  2498. 
*  Her  name  k'also  given  as  Aalays  [Alice],  or  aa  Elizabeth,  in  the  early 
Urm.    See  Vita,  iv.  col.  2491  ;  iil  col  2475. 


J 


140  BERNARD   OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

her;  that  Cimabue,  two  centuries  later,  sought  to  fix 
in  color  for  after  time  the  face  and  figure  of  which  only 
fading  traditions  remained;  that  Dante  represented  her 
as  a  celestial  messenger  preceding  the  chariot  on  which 
the  glorified  Beatrice  was  enthroned.^  She  really  in- 
terprets to  us  the  time  on  which  her  name  reflects  a 
splendor. 

Nor  may  we  forget  the  devout  mother  by  whom 
Matilda  had  been  trained,  on  whose  sarcophagus  at 
Pisa  it  was  inscribed  by  her  order :  "  Though  a  sinner, 
I  am  the  Lady  called  Beatrice.  In  this  tomb  I  lie,  who 
was  a  Countess.  Whosoever  thou  art,  say  three  pater 
nosters  for  my  soul. "  *  Nor  should  Agnes,  mother  of 
Henry  Fourth,  be  forgotten,  who  laid  aside  all  courtly 
splendors  for  the  higher  welfare  sought  for  the  soul; 
who  styled  herself,  in  writing  to  an  abbot  for  spiritual 
counsel,  "Agnes,  empress  and  sinner,"  but  who  was 
addressed  by  another  as  "  Blessed  Lady,  pious  mother  of 
the  poor,  and  noble  ornament  of  widowhood."*  Nor, 
certainly,  should  Ida  of  Bouillon  fail  to  be  remembered, 
"full  of  piety,  and  versed  in  literature,"  as  she  was 
described  at  the  time,  and  of  whose  son  Godfrey  the 
eulogy  was  that  at  the  sight  of  him,  humble,  gentle, 
just,  chaste,  marshalling  armies,  and  ever  first  to 
strike  the  foe,  even  a  rival  must  say,  "For  zeal  in 

1  Purgatorio,  xxriii.-xxz. 

*  ViUemain,  Hist,  de  Grdg.  VII.,  torn.  ii.  p.  113. 

A  sarcophagus,  admirably  wrought,  is  now  in  the  Gampo  Santo  at 
Pisa,  haying  been  removed  Arom  the  Duomo,  and  still  bearing  the  first  part 
of  the  inscription  which  V illemain  cites !  — 

<*  Qaamvis  peccatrix,  sum  Domna  vocata  Beatrix. 
In  tomulo  missa  jaceo  que  Comitissa. 

▲•  D.  MLXXVI." 

*  The  letters  are  copied  in  Maitland's  **  Dark  Ages,'*  pp.  814-d2L 
London  ed.,  1844. 


HIS  PSB80NAL  CHARAGTGBIBTIGS.  141 

war,  behold  his  father;  for  serving  God,  behold  his 
motiier ! ''  It  was  her  spirit  which  reappeared  in  him 
when,  after  the  capture  of  Jerusalem  by  the  Crusaders, 
he  utterly  refused  to  be  crowned  with  gold  where  his 
Master  had  borne  the  crown  of  thorns.^  Nor  may  we 
forget  Matilda,  of  England,  another  of  these  remark- 
able women,  nobly  bom,  highly  placed,  and  Christian- 
hearted,  of  whom  Ordericus  says  that  "  beauty  of  person, 
high  birth,  a  cultivated  mind,  an  exalted  virtue,  com- 
bined to  grace  this  illustrious  queen;  and  what  is  still 
more  worthy  of  immortal  praise,"  he  adds,  ^'she  was 
firm  in  the  faith,  and  devoted  to  the  service  of  Christ, 
with  fervent  zeal  daily  distributing  her  charities. '' ' 

That  women  like  these  only  represented  multitudes 
of  others,  of  less  titular  distinction  but  of  the  same 
spirit,  and  in  their  respective  spheres  of  a  similarly 
commanding  spiritual  influence,  can  hardly  need  to  be 
argued.  They  were  devoted  to  the  Church,  which  to 
their  minds  expressed  and  embodied  Christianity.     It 

:^/^^was  that  Church,  with  the  Gospel  which   it  howeverl 
T  imperfectly  set  forth  in  the  world,  which  had  given  to  \ 

,^^^them  protectioiT'and  training,  and  had  been  the  mothecr 
of  whatever  was  best  in  them.  It  was  that  which  re- 
strained, 80  far  as  they  were  restrained,  the  fierce  ele- 
ments of  cruel  force  incessantly  active  and  destructive 
around  them.  The  stress  of  the  times  thus  conspired 
with  their  highest  aspirations  to  make  them  devotees. 
The  clergy  might  be  vicious,  the  prelates  arrc^nt,  in- 
dolent, unbelieving,  but  a  vivid  faith  was  maintained 
by  the  women ;  and  the  whole  force  of  their  inspiring 

>  Httc  filioB  in  omni  dlBciplina  et  timore  Dei  educavit,  et  qun  digna 
mot  principfttu  agere  docait,  atqoe  ad  saDctoa  et  bonoa  mores  infonnayit 
—  Ada  SancL,  April,  dec  ter.  p.  146. 

*  KcoL  Hist,  lib.  iv.  cap.  v.  ;  an.  1068. 


142  BBBNABD  OP  CLAIBYAUX  : 

moral  energy  was  exerted  without  stint  for  the  fur- 
therance of  institutions  to  which  they  felt  themselves 
deeply  indebted.  Oftentimes  they  sought  convent-life 
for  themselves.  If  unable  to  do  this,  their  sons  and 
daughters  were  sacredly  devoted  to  the  service  of  the 
Church,  with  an  intensity  of  consecration  which,  as  in 
the  instance  of  Bernard,  shot  ito  influence  forward  over 
the  whole  subsequent  life  of  those  to  whom  they  had 
given  birth. 

Of  those  who  entered  the  special  separate  life  of  reli- 
gion, no  one  is  more  distinguished  in  the  history  of  the 
time  than  is  Hildegarde,  the  abbess  of  a  convent  on 
the  Rupertsberg,  near  Bingen,  to  whom  Bernard  at  the 
height  of  his  fame  called  the  particular  attention  of  the 
Pope,  and  to  whom  Neander,  both  in  h!s  general  His- 
tory and  in  his  life  of  Bernard,  devotes  not  a  few  of  his 
ample  yet  crowded  pages.  ^  So  many  of  the  moral  traits 
of  the  time  are  illustrated  in  her  history,  she  brings 
before  us  so  much  of  what  was  fine  and  prophetic  in 
its  brightening  atmosphere,  that  perhaps  you  will  par- 
don me  if  I  briefly  pause  upon  it  Of  honorable  if  not 
of  noble  parentage,  devoted  to  the  cloister  from  her 
infancy  and  entering  it  at  the  age  of  eight  years,  she 
had  been  wont  from  childhood  to  see  strange  radiances, 
and  to  feel  herself  approached  by  spiritual  powers. 
She  kept  the  extraordinary  experiences  to  herself, 
though  her  health  suffered  severely  beneath  the  pro- 

i  Hist  of  Christ  Religion  and  Chnroh,  yol.  !▼.  pp,  17*20 ;  Der  lieilige 
Bembard  nnd  aein  Zeitalter,  as.  866-874. 

A  yet  more  complete  and  particular  account  of  Hfldegaide,  of  Bernard's 
relation  to  her,  and  of  the  honors  paid  her  by  popes,  emperors,  princes, 
arehhishops,  and  other  high  officials,  is  also  given  by  ThMore  Ratisbonne 
in  his  "  Histoira  de  St  Bernard,'*  torn.  u.  pp.  258-S81.  Paris  ed.,  1S75  ; 
and  he  sappties,  in  a  form  accessible  to  all,  important  extracts  from  her 
letters  and  other  writings. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  143 

longed  strain  of  silence.  At  last  relief  came,  in  her 
forty-third  year,  through  a  command  to  speak,  which 
seemed  to  her  to  fall  from  heaven,  and  to  be  Terified  as 
Divine  by  a  marvellous  attendant  lustre.^  Thencefor- 
ward she  spoke  to  princes,  prelates,  or  peoples,  with  the 
freedom,  the  boldness,  and  almost  the  authority  of  one 
inspired.  The  mystical  spirit  which  always  appeared 
in  her,  setting  her  signally  apart  from  others,  was  illus- 
trated not  only  in  the  sphere  of  religion,  but  almost 
equally  in  her  reverence  for  music,  which  she  declared 
to  have  its  origin  in  the  divine  voice  of  the  Spirit  of  Gk>d, 
of  which  voice  terrestrial  melodies  were  but  echoes.  So 
she  insisted  that  the  art  should  be  cultivated  in  a 
devout  frame  of  mind,  and  called  those  ^  sages  "  who 
served  well  oa/organs.  At  the  same  time  she  was  as 
shrewd  in  practical  counsel  as  if  the  sphere  of  tran- 
scendent thought  had  been  wholly  beyond  her.  ^^  I  often 
observe, "  she  wrote  to  an  abbess,  who  had  sought  her 
counsel,  ^that  when  a  man  mortifies  his  body  by  excess 
of  abstinence,  a  certain  disgust  rises  in  him,  by  reason 
of  which  disgust  vicious  indulgences  are  more  apt  to 
entangle  him  than  if  he  had  allowed  himself  proper 
nourishment"*  To  another  abbess  she  wrote:  ^^ Con- 
sider and  hold  fast  the  Scriptures,  which  are  set  and 


1  SoM  qtudngenmo  toitio  temporalis  cniras  mei  anno,  cum  oodesti 
viiioiie  nHigno  timore  tremula  intentione  inhereram,  vidi  maximnm  tplen- 
doran,  in  quo  ftota  est  vox  de  ccelo  sd  me  dioens  ...  die  et  scribe  qiue 
vid«  et  Midis. .  • .  Et  iteram  audivi  Tooem  de  caHo  mihi  dioentem  :  Die 
ago  minbilia  Ii«c^  et  scribe  ea  hoc  modo  edocta,  et  die.  . . .  Rt  dixi  et 
■nipsi  Imsc,  wm  secondnm  adinyentionem  cordtB  mei  aat  uUius  hominia, 
Md  vt  ea  in  ccdestibiis  yidi,  audiri  et  peroepi  per  secreta  mysteria  DeL  •— 
A  Biid.  SeMu,  PrtgftUio  [Migne],  coll.  883-386. 

*  tepe  video  qnando  homo  per  nimietatem  abstinentte  corpus  suum 
affligit,  quod  tadiam  in  illo  sargit,  et  t«dio  vitia  st*  iinpUcant,  |Jus  qnam 
si  iUnd  jnste  pasceret  —  8.  ffild.  J^friH.  cv.  cul.  327. 


144  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

nourished  in  the  root  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  are  writ- 
ten in  the  Divine  wisdom.  The  Scripture  is  a  mirror, 
in  which  we  see  Ood  We  ought  never  to  tempt  Him 
[by  curious  questions],  but  reverently  to  adore  Him. 
Man  often,  as  by  an  impulse  from  Ood  himself,  desires 
to  know  what  it  is  not  permitted  him  to  know,  and  so 
departs  from  divine  obedience;  at  which  the  devil 
greatly  rejoices,  seeing  him  failing  on  one  side  or  an- 
other. Often  the  adversary  shoots  such  arrows  into 
man's  heart,  that  through  them  he  may  misconceive 
Gk)d.  Happy  the  man  who  neither  desires  such,  nor 
accepts  them,  but  who  in  the  very  agony  of  death  lives 
in  the  things  of  Grod.  •  .  .  The  desire  to  do  good  things 
makes  the  spirit  beautiful  as  a  flowering  tree.  An  ear- 
nest zeal  in  the  doing  of  them  is  far  better,  like  a  tree 
on  which  growing  fruit  appears. "  ^ 

Neander  seems  to  accept  this  remarkable  woman,  as 
Bernard  did  at  the  time,  as  gifted  with  a  true  pro- 
phetic foresight'    Whether  this  were  true  or  not,  she 

1  Epigt.  cxii.  ooU.  442-448. 

*  A  oertain  facility  of  prophecy  seema  implanted  ia  the  apirit  of  ha- 
manity ;  undefined  preaentiments  haaten  to  anticipate  the  mighty  fotara^ 
.  .  .  The  apirit  of  the  kingdom  of  Ood  hegeta,  therefore,  in  thoae  who  are 
filled  with  it,  a  prophetic  conaciouaneaa,  —  preaentiments  in  regard  to  the 
grand  whole  of  the  evolution,  which  are  different  from  the  prediction  of 
individual  eventa  not  neceaaarily  connected  with  that  whole.  —  Nban- 
DBS,  EiiL  of  ChriU,,  vol.  iv.  p.  216. 

Bernard  wrote  to  her  :  "  I  congratulate  you  on  the  grace  of  Ood  toward 
you,  and  admoniah  you  to  receive  it  aa  grace,  and  that  you  atudy  to  ra- 
apond  to  it  with  humble  and  devout  affection.  But  where  there  is  the  in- 
ward wisdom,  and  the  unction  which  teaoheth  of  all  thinga*  how  is  it 
poaaible  for  one  either  to  teach  or  to  exhort  ?  For  you  ^^ure  declaied  to 
aearch  out  heavenly  aecreta,  and  to  discover  things  above  human  knowl 
edge,  by  the  illumination  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Wherefore  I  the  more  en- 
treat and  pray  that  you  will  have  the  remembrance  of  me  before  God,  and 
equally  of  those  who  are  associated  with  me  in  spiritual  fellowahip.*'  — 
OperOf  voL  prim.  epia.  ccclxvi.  coL  668. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  145 

bad  the  clearest  discernment  of  the  eyils  aronnd  her, 
in  Church  and  State,  and  the  most  absolute  fearless- 
ness in  exposing  and  denouncing  them.  She  was  cer- 
tainly a  prophet  in  interpreting  God's  will,  and  in 
insisting  on  a  spiritual  religion.  She  wrote  a  letter  of 
extraordinary  power  and  severity  to  the  dean  and  clergy 
of  Cologne,  warning  them  that  the  avenging  power  of 
God  would  bow  their  high  heads,  because  they  feared 
neither  Ood  nor  man,  and  did  not  hate  unrighteous- 
ness ;  because  they  yielded  to  the  desires  of  the  flesh, 
and  did  not  labor  for  the  glory  of  Grod  and  the  salva- 
tion of  human  souls.  ^  She  wrote  with  equal  severity 
to  the  clergy  of  Mayence,  who  had  trespassed,  as  she 
conceived,  on  the  rights  of  her  convent,  and  against 
whom  she  exalted  the  majesty  of  God.  ^  None  were  so 
high  in  rank  or  so  established  in  power  as  to  be  beyond 
the  reach  of  her  vehement  remonstrance  or  her  sting- 
ing reproof,  if  their  lives  did  not  illustrate  the  evan- 
gelical spirit  The  Pope  himself,  Eugenius  Third,  after 
the  important  council  of  Treves  where  her  writings  had 
been  examined,  and  where  Bernard  had  expressed  his 

^  Some  sentences  from  the  letter  may  be  quoted  :  ''  Sed  hoc  propter 
pertinadam  propri»  voluntatis  vestrss  non  facitis.  Vos  enim  noz  spirans 
tenebras  estis,  et  quasi  populus  non  laborans,  nee  propter  tSBdium  in  luce 
ambolans ;  sed  veiut  nudus  coluber  in  oavema  se  abscondit,  sic  ros  fosdi- 
tatem  in  Tilitate  peoorum  intratis.  . .  .  Sed  hoc  non  estis,  sed  veloces  estis 
ad  lasciTiam  puerilis  atatis,  illorum  scilicet,  qui  de  salute  sua  loqui  nesci- 
imt.  .  •  .  Nam  potestas  Dei,  colla  vestra  iniquitate  erecta  depriroet,  et  ad 
nihilum  deducet  qun  velut  in  sufflatu  venti  inflata  sunt,  cum  Deum  non 
cognoncitis,  nee  hominem  timetis,  nee  iniquitatem  contemnitis,  nt  earn  in 
▼obis  finiii  desideretis.  I>eum  non  yidetis,  nee  ridere  desideratis.  Sed 
ap&n  Tastra  intpicitis,  et  ea  in  yobismetipsis  judicatis,  scilicet  faciendo  et 
relinquendo  secundum  placitum  vestrum  qu»  vultis.  **  et  seq.  The  letter 
Is  zlyin.  [Migne],  coll.  244-253. 

'  Et  audiyi  yocem  sic  dicentem :    Quia  creayit  coslum  7    Deus.     Quia 
aperit  fidelibus  soia  coelum  ?   Pens.    Quis  ejus  simills  I   Kollus.  —  Op^ra, 
zlviu  coL  221. 

10 


146  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUZ  : 

judgment  of  her  character  and  work,  wrote  to  her  with 
bis  own  hand  that  he  was  amazed  beyond  expression  at 
the  new  wonders  which  were  being  wrought  of  God, 
who  had  so  filled  her  with  his  Spirit  that  she  could  see 
and  reveal  the  things  unseen.^  Discussions  of  theolo- 
gians were  submitted  to  her.  The  emperor  Frederick 
Barbarossa,  one  of  the  boldest  of  the  monarchs  of  the 
time,  and  least  inclined  to  religious  obedience,  paid  her 
honor  and  sought  her  advice ; '  and  it  certainly  illus- 
trates the  better  forces  which  had  come  to  activity  in 
the  time  when  she  lived,  that  this  frail  woman,  with- 
out wealth,  high  station,  or  the  power  of  arms,  by  her 
spiritual  energy,  exhibited  through  a  life  unusually 
prolonged,^  in  wise  counsel  and  a  consecrated  spirit^ 
conquered  the  respect  and  allured  the  obedience,  not  o£ 
the  retired  and  studious  alone,  but  of  the  wild  soldier, 
the  martial  baron,  the  imperious  prince,  who  sought  the 
word  of  God  through  her  lips.  Her  remarkable  story, 
of  itself  gives  moral  lustre  to  the  period.^ 

*  Hinmur,  0  Filia,  et  supra  id  quod  credi  potest,  minmnr,  quia  Dens 
jam  nostris  temporibns  norm  miracala  ostendit,  com  te  spiritu  soo  ita 
perfiidit  qaod  dioeris  malta  secrets  Tidere,  inteUigere  et  profeire,  Hoo 
a  Teridids  penonis  ita  esse  percepimus,  qui  se  fatentur  te  et  fidisse  et  an- 
disss.  Sed  quid  nos  ad  htto  dioere  yalemiis,  qui  clayem  scientia  habeDtaa. 
ita  quod  claudere  et  aperire  possiinns,  et  hoc  prudenter  facere  per  stttltitiam 
negligimus  f  Oongratulamur  igitur  gratise  Dei,  congratalamur  et  dilectioni 
ttt«,  hoc  admonentes,  ut  sciasquod  Deos  superbis  resistit,  homilibos  autem 
dat  gratiam.  Gratiam  autem  hauc  qu«  in  te  est  conserva  et  costodi,  ita 
ut  ea  qu«  in  spiritu  proferenda  senseris,  prudenter  proferas.  —  Optra 
S'  ffiUL,  epist  prima,  col.  146. 

s  Epist  xzTii.  coll.  186-187. 

*  Bom  A.D.  1098»  died  a.d.  1197.  (<<  Der  heilige  Benihard,"  s.  869.) 
Ratisbonne  saya^  howerer,  that  aha  died  September  17,  a.ti.  1179  <'*Hiat. 
de  St.  Bernard,*'  torn.  iL-  p.  281) ;  and  this  is  the  date  given  in  the  ''Acta 
Sanctorum,"  apparently  after  careful  examination.  She  was  then  in  h«r 
ai^ty-seoond  year. 

^  Neander^s  estimate  of  her  influence  is  just  and  emphatic  :  — 

Immer  ist  es  schon,  xu  sehen,  dass  die  Miiehtigeten  der  Srde^  die  kaiaa 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  147 

Among  those  who  did  not  enter  the  cloister,  but  who 
gave  their  life  to  domestic  care  in  noble  castles,  or  often 
no  donbt  in  lowlier  homes,  were  such  as  Ermenberga, 
the  mother  of  Anselm,  of  whom  I  have  spoken ;  or  such 
as  the  mother  of  Eberhard,  afterward  Archbishop  of 
Salzburg,  who  occupied  herself  with  almsgiving  and 
prayer,  and  who,  having  caused  a  church  to  be  erected 
on  her  estate,  herself  carried  in  part  the  stones  for  its 
walls,  walking  barefoot  as  she  went  ^ 

Such,  we  may  be  sure,  was  the  venerated  mother  of 
Peter  the  Venerable,  who  was  himself  long  and  closely 
connected  with  Bernard.  Of  a  distinguished  family  in 
Auvergne,  she  had  eagerly  wished  to  retire  to  a  con- 
vent, but  fidelity  to  her  husband  during  his  life  had 
forbidden  her  to  fulfil  the  desire.  After  his  death, 
having  arranged  her  affairs  and  paid  a  final  visit  to 
his  grave,  she  proceeded  to  the  abbey  of  Marcigni,  to 
find  there  the  rest  and  delight  which,  as  she  said,  all 
riches,  honors,  and  pleasures  of  the  world  could  not 
afford.  Her  influence  with  her  son  had  already  di- 
rected him  tofthe  monastic  life,  which  his  gentleness, 

Gcwilt  fiirchteten,  dch  beugten  vor  einer  Kraft,  die  de  fur  hoher  hielten 
•b  ADm^  waa  dorch  Menschen  verlieheD  warden  kann,  als  alle  Majeatat 
der  Erda  mid  der  aie  umgebande  Ohmzi  daaa  die  machtigaten  Forstea  vor 
den  Fttaaea  einer  unaoadralicben  Nonne,  nur  deasw^gen,  weil  aie  dieselbe 
liir  daa  Organ  gottlicher  Olfenbarungen  hielten,  weil  sie  Ton  ihr  Worte 
Temahmen,  die  ihnen  an'a  Herz  drangen,  den  ganzen  Prank  ihrer  Mijestat 
niederlegten,  daaa  aelbet  Diejenigen,  welcha  aich  die  Gewalt  beil^gten,  zu 
liinden  nnd  zu  Ibaeo  fur  Himmel  und  Erde,  sich  demtitbigten  vor  einer 
vnmittelbar  ana  dem  Reiche,  zu  dam  aie  nach  dea  Zeitalters  Meinung  den 
Sehliiaaal  hatten,  erachaUenden  Stimnie.  —  D$r  heiliqe  Bernhardt  a.  374. 

>  Ferrea  rirtus :  ciyaa  bene  geeta  commendare  hoc  uno  sufficiat,  quod 
cecleaiam  in  honore  S.  Maris  perpetus  viiginia  cum  yiro  in  curte  propria 
atatuena,  dimidio  ferme  miUiario  nudipes  ad  earn  propriia  humeria  Impidea 
inrre  adiehat.  .  . .  Trahebat  ibi,  cum  pedissequia  suia,  mnlierum  utrinaqne 
condHionia  non  parvam  turbam,  aaza  portantium.  —  Acta  SaneL,  Jan«  iv. 
dia  Yigaa.  aacunda,  p.  161. 


148  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBTAnZ  : 

wisdom,  vigor,  and  piety  made  illustrious ;  and  after 
her  death  he  wrote  of  her  to  his  brothers  in  the  tender- 
est  strains  of  grateful  and  admiring  Christian  affection.^ 

I  have  cited  these  examples,  to  which  'many  might 
be  added,  that  we  may  have  the  fact  clearly  before  us 
that  Christian  women,  in  the  midst  of  centuries  so 
rude  and  dark,  possessed  and  used  great  power  for  the 
Church ;  and  that  the  influence  of  their  words,  as  rein- 
forced by  the  earnestness  of  their  character  and  the 
holiness  of  their  life,  became  often  a  mighty  though  a 
subtile  force,  not  only  for  directing  the  course  of  their 
children,  but  for  educating  society.  It  is  in  the  light 
of  this  general  fact  that  we  are  to  set  the  story  of 
Alctta,  the  mother  of  Bernard,  a  woman  most  faithful, 
noble,  and  devout,  worthy  to  be  ranked  with  either 
whom  I  have  named,  and  in  the  effect  of  her  life  sur- 
passed by  no  one.  Possibly,  no  doubt,  things  strange 
and  fanciful  may  appear  to  us,  in  our  critical  days,  in 
the  narratives  which  remain  as  her  record.  But  we 
must  be  wholly  blind  to  the  true  and  sovereign  beauty 
of  character  in  wife  and  mother  if  we  do  not  clearly 
discern  this  in  her. 

Of  noble  birth,  connected  ancestrally  with  the  ducal 
house  of  Burgundy,  she  early  desired  for  herself  the 
convent-life,  but  was  married  by  her  parents  at  the  age 
of  fifteen  to  Tescelin,  the  knight  of  Fontaines,  to  whom 

^  The  long  letter,  oovering  still  not  a  few  pages,  and  originally  ma&y 
sheets,  closes  thus  :  "  Et  tos,  qnibus  hanc  epistolam  scripsi,  fratres  met, 
tanUB  matris  filii,  enibescite  degeneres  yideri ;  sed  a  qua  sumpsiatis  vitm 
h^jaa  originem,  ab  ipsa  in  vos  derivate  coelestis,  cai  yos  a  paero  devoyit, 
amorem.  Qun  foit  mater  corpomin,  sit  rarsum  genitrix  animonim,  ne 
qui  ei  consimiles  estis  corporibns,  dissimUes  (qnod  absit)  inTeniaiqini  mori- 
bus.  Partnriat  tos  exemplo  et  precibus,  donee  fonnetor  Christoa  in  vobis, 
at  par  earn  illiun  habere  mereamint  Patrem,  per  qnem  ipaam  nemiatia 
habere  et  matrem.**  — Qprra  Petri  Vem.,  liK  ii.  ep.  xviL 


HIS  PEBSONAL   CHARACTEBISTIGS.  149 

she  bore  seven  children, —  six  sons  and  a  daughter. 
For  herself  she  followed  in  the  castle  a  monastic  rule 
of  life,^  and  amid  all  the  cares  which  came  with  her 
station,  and  with  her  assiduous  attention  to  her  chil- 
dren, she  was  wont  to  go  personally  from  house  to  house 
among  the  poor,  searching  out  the  needy  and  infirm, 
preparing  food  for  them,  ministering  to  the  sick,  cleans- 
ing their  poor  cups  and  vessels  with  her  own  hands, 
and  performing  for  them  the  humblest  offices  without 
aid  of  servants.^  It  is  particularly  related  of  her  that 
havii^  dedicated  her  children  to  God,  and  really  borne 
them  for  Him,  she  was  careful  to  nurse  them  herself, 
contrary  to  the  custom  of  the  time  among  those  of  her 
rank,  believing  that  with  the  mother's  milk  something 
of  the  mother's  spirit  might  be  infused.^  Bernard, 
especially,  her  third  son,  concerning  whom  she  seemed 
to  herself  to  have  been  prophetically  taught  in  a  dream 
that  he  would  be  a  signal  champion  of  the  truth, ^  was 

1  In  medio  secoli  eremiticam  sea  monasticam  vitam  oon  panro  tempore 
viaa  est  »malari,  in  victus  parcitate,  in  vilitate  vestitus,  delicias  et  pompas 
MDcali  a  se  abdicando,  ab  actibos  et  curia  secularibus,  in  quantum  poterat, 
ae  Bubtrahendo,  insistendo  jejuniis,  vigiliis,  et  orationibus ;  et  quod  minus 
awamptiB  professionis  habebat,  elleemosynis  et  diverais  operibus  miaeri- 
cordiflB  redimendo.  —  Opera  S,  Bernard,  vol.  sec,  Vita,  i.  col.  2095. 

'  Consueverat . . .  circuire  domos,  exquirere  pauperes,  infirmos,  et  egenos, 
eiaque  de  suo  proprio  erogare  l^uod  necessarium  erat.  Claudorum  etiam 
atque  debilinm  maximam  habebat  curam :  non  seiris,  non  aliis  utens 
ministrie  ad  h»c  officia  peragenda,  sed  per  semetipsam  hoc  agens,  ad  eomm 
liabitacula  Teniebat ;  .  .  .  oUas  eorum  eztergens,  cibos  porrigens,  calices 
dilnens,  et  alia  cnncta  faciens,  quae  serris  et  ministris  mos  est  serviliter 
operari.  —  Opera  S.  Bernard,  vol.  sec.,  Vita,  iv,  col.  2498. 

*  Deo  namque,  non  sseculo  generans,  singulos  moz  ut  partu  ediderat, 
ipsa  manibus  propriis  Domino  offerebat  Propter  quod  etiam  alienis  uberi- 
bos  notriendos  oommittere  illnstris  femina  refttgiebat,  quasi  cum  lacte  ma- 
temo  matemi  quodammodo  boni  infundens  eis  naturam.  —  Opera,  vol' 
aec,  Vita,  L  col.  2092. 

«  Op«ra,  vol.  see.  Vita,  L  coL  2098. 


150  BERNARD   OP  CLAIRVAUX  : 

thus  dedicated  to  the  service  of  Christ  with  all  die 
energy  of  maternal  devotion ;  and  the  influence  of  the 
fact  conspicuously  appears  in  his  whole  life. 

Not  many  incidents  are  recorded  of  the  devout  and 
modest  life  of  this  elect  lady,  but  those  which  attended 
her  death  were  so  remarkable  that  a  particular  and 
affectionate  narrative  of  them  was  made  by  her  nephew, 
which  still  remains  to  us.  She  had  been  Ipng  accus- 
tomed to  invite  the  neighboring  clergy  to  the  castle  on 
the  festival  of  Saint  Ambrosien,  the  patron  saint  of  the 
church  at  Fontaines.^  Before  her  death  there  came  to 
her  a  strong  presentiment  that  it  was  appointed  to  her 
to  pass  from  the  earth  on  that  particular  day;  and  of 
this  she  informed  her  husband  and  her  household, 
without  however  interrupting  or  postponing  the  festal 
arrangements.  On  the  evening  before  the  feast  she 
was  in  fact  stricken  with  violent  fever;  and  on  the 
next  day,  having  received  the  sacraments  of  the  Euchar- 
ist and  the  Holy  Unction,  she  called  the  assembled 
clergy  after  their  supper  to  meet  at  her  bedside,  an- 
nounced to  them  her  imminent  dissolution,  and  joined 
with  them  in  the  petitions  of  the  Litany  for  the  depart- 
ing. When  the  touching  and  sublime  invocation  was 
reached,  "By  Thy  cross  and  passion,  O  Lord,  deliver 
her ! "  her  voice  failed  in  death,  but  with  lifted  hand, 
tracing  for  the  last  time  the  cross  in  the  air,  dhe  ren- 
dered up  her  spirit  in  peace.  Without  fear  or  regret, 
in  the  tranquillity  of  a  perfect  faith,  she  had  gone  to 
meet  the  waiting  angels ;  and  it  was  with  something  of 

1  Saint  Ambroisien  ^tait  un  ^vdqae  martyrise  en  Ann^nie.  Une  1^ 
gende  raconte  que  sea  reliqnea  avaient  et^  port^es  de  Tern  Sainte  en  Boor- 
gogne  par  on  cheyalier  de  U  famille  de  Saint  Beroaid.  — Batisbomnx: 
Hid,  d§  St,  Bernard^  torn.  L  p.  71. 


HIS  PEB80NAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  151 

wondering  awe  that  those  around  her  saw  her  hand  still 
raised  in  its  last  action.  ^ 

Her  body  was  sought,  after  her  death,  by  the  abbot 
of  the  conyent  of  St.  Benignus  at  Dijon,  as  a  most  pre- 
cious treasure  for  his  house.  It  was  carried  thither 
with  bended  heads  and  flowing  tears,  was  met  on  the 
way  by  the  whole  population  bearing  crosses  and  can- 
dles, and  was  laid  with  exceeding  joy  and  veneration 
in  its  resting-place  under  the  shadow  of  the  great 
basilica.  There  it  remained  a  century  and  a  hal^  till 
the  monks  of  Olairvaux  claimed  and  received  all  that 
was  left  of  the  ^  holy  body  "  of  the  blessed  mother  of 
their  great  abbot' 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  this  brief  and  tender  story, 
taken  directly  from  ancient  records,  is  answer  enough  to 
tbose  who  imagine  that  the  beauty  of  feminine  charity 
and  piety  was  not  then  recognized,  and  that  only  the 
fierce  collisions  and  catastrophes  of  politics  and  of  arms 
engaged  and  impressed  the  minds  of  men. 

If  ever  a  mother's  wish  and  prayer,  and  Christian 
counsel,  determined  the  character  and  career  of  a  son, 
those  of  the  mother  of  Bernard  determined  his.  After 
her  death,  which  occurred  while  he  was  still  a  youth,  her 

^  Adannt  derid:  qniboB  congregatis,  in  spirita  oongratulans  andlla 
Chiisti,  nunttat  diaaolationein  aui  corporis  imminere.  lUi  autem  Domi* 
nnm  pro  ea  sopplidter  ezorantes,  litaniam  incoBpemnt :  com  qnibas  ipsa, 
qaonaqua  nltimiim  exhakret  spiritum,  deTotissime  paaUebat.  Com  Tero 
clioms  paallentium  jam  penreniaset  ad  illam  Utaniie  supplicationem,  "  Per 
pustoDflm  et  cracem  tuam  libera  earn,  Domine,*'  necdam  cessans  a  snppli- 
catione,  in  ipso  mortis  articalo,  in  manns  Domini  oommendans  spiritum 
sanm,  derata  mann  signans  se  signaculo  sanetae  cmds,  in  pace  reddidit 
sptTitnm :  procul  dnUo  receptnm  ab  Angelis.  ...  In  hnnc  modum  sancta 
iDa  anima  de  templo  sancti  corporis  egressa,  manns,  dent  erat  erecta  ad  in- 
dieandnm  signnm  omds,  yidentibns  et  admirantibos  cnnctis  qui  adeimt, 
■0  fsoiaiidt.  —  Opera  S.  Bern,,  Vita,  iv.  toI.  sec  ooU.  2494*95* 

*  Opfra &  Bemtardf  vol.  sec.,  Vita,  ir.  coL  2495^ 


n 


152  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

image  continued  vividly  before  him.  He  remembered 
her  words,  and  meditated  affectionately  on  her  plans  for 
himself.  More  than  once  he  thought  or  felt  that  she 
personally  appeared  to  him ;  and  it  was  in  connection 
with  an  impression  of  this  kind  that  his  final  devotion 
to  the  monastic  life  took  immediate  effect.  While  she 
still  lived  he  had  been  sent  to  the  cathedral  school  at 
Ghfttillon,  and  had  there  distinguished  himself  among 
his  fellows,  surpassing  them  in  grace  and  genius  as 
well  as  in  proficiency  in  his  studies.  He  had  been 
remarked,  even  then,  as  one  who  loved  to  be  by  himself, 
shunning  public  prominence,  not  given  to  much  talk, 
yet  marvellously  thoughtful,  kind  and  obedient,  faithful 
and  modest,  devoted  to  God,  and  careful  to  keep  his 
boyhood  pure.^  Then,  and  afterward,  his  reverence  for 
the  chastity  of  his  body  was  as  delicate  as  that  of  the 
purest  of  women,  while  it  had  in  it  the  strength  of 
virile  passion.  It  is  strikingly  illustrated  in  several 
incidents  of  which  his  biographers  give  the  narrative.' 

When  he  stood  face  to  face  with  the  world  after  the 
death  of  his  mother,  four  different  paths  were  open  to 
him,  either  of  which  he  might  have  pursued,  doubtless 
with  distinguished  success.  To  one  of  his  fine  pres- 
ence, graceful  and  attractive  manners,  combined  sa  in 
him  they  were  with  great  activity  of  mind,  a  fearless- 
ness of  spirit  that  never  failed,  and  an  extraordinary 
power  of  command  over  others,  the  court  and  the  camp 

^  Puer  antem  et  gratia  plenus,  et  ingenio  natarali  pollens,  ...  in  litte- 
rarum  qaidem  studio  supra  setatem  et  pre  coetaneis  suis  proficiebat ; . .  . 
amans  habitare  aecum,  publioura  fugitans,  mire  cogitativus,  parentibns  obe- 
diens  et  subditus  ;  omnibus  benignus  et  gratns,  domi  simplex  et  quietus, 
foris  larus,  et  ultra  quam  credi  posset  verecundus  ;  nusquam  multnm  loqoi 
amans,  Deo  deTotus,  ut  puram  sibi  pueritiam  suam  oonserraret.  —  Optra 
S.  JBem,^  vol.  sec,  Vita,  L  col.  2093. 

s  Yol  aec.,  Vita,  L  ooU.  2096-97,  iL  ooL  2408. 


I 


HIS  PEBBONAL  CHABA0TEBI8TIC8.  158 

offered  every  opportunity,  promising  wealth,  rank,  pleas- 
ure, in  the  utmost  abundance.  If  he  were  not  drawn 
toward  either  of  these,  the  schools  of  the  time,  fast 
rising  in  importance,  and  destined  ere  long  to  grow  to 
universities,  opened  a  large  and  inviting  field  to  his 
eager  genius,  wherein  could  be  exercised  and  enjoyed 
to  the  full  his  skill  in  dialectics,  his  power  of  studious 
contemplation,  with  his  surpassing  gift  of  eloquent 
speech.  He  felt  this  attraction  himself;  his  brothers 
and  friends  strongly  presented  it ;  and  his  ultimate 
decision  was  delayed  in  consequence.^  Even  if  he 
chose  a  distinctly  religious  life,  the  Church,  with  all  its 
offices  and  honors,  its  magnificent  buildings,  splendid 
privileges,  vast  emoluments,  invited  him  to  enter  it 
and  to  take  from  it  whatever  he  wished  of  princely 
position,  revenue,  fame.  Others  might  have  to  strive 
for  its  offices;  he  could  have  them  without  an  effort, 
almost  without  asking;  and  certainly  a  spirit  essen- 
tially ambitious,  though  retaining  a  measure  of  Chris- 
tian fervor,  might  have  gladly  embraced  such  an 
opportunity,  and  have  thus  united  large  influence  for 
good  with  the  leisure  and  distinction  of  an  assured  and 
brilliant  position. 

Bernard  turned  from  everything  else  in  the  way  of  a 
career  to  the  most  severe  and  exacting  monastic  life,  in 
a  recent  and  poor  convent,  unknown  to  fame,  amid  deso- 
late surroundings,  its  fields  only  partially  redeemed  as 
yet  from  the  sullen  wilderness  by  the  axe  and  the 
plough;  and  he  did  it,  plainly,  under  the  impressions 
which  the  whole  spirit  and  life  of  Aletta  had  left  upon 
him.  Modest  and  gentle  as  she  had  been,  there  had 
been  an  immense  radiancy  of  character  in  her.  Her 
intense  devotion  survived  and  conquered  over  the  very 

1  Open.,  vol.  aeo.,  Vita,  i.  col.  2098. 


154  BERNABD  OP  CLAIRVAUZ  . 

dust  of  death.  The  sacred  memory  of  her  was  so  pres- 
ent to  her  son  that  he  seemed  to  see  her  standing  be* 
fore  him,  lamenting  and  reproving  his  hesitation  to 
choose  the  noblest  things ;  and  when,  as  he  was  reason- 
ing with  his  younger  brother  Andrew,  to  persuade  him 
to  the  consecration  to  which  he  had  himself  passion- 
ately come,  Andrew  suddenly  exclaimed,  under  the 
impulse  of  his  fervent  words,  "I  see  my  Mother!" 
Bernard  confessed  the  same  vivid  vision.^  No  one  can 
carefully  study  the  man  without  feeling  that  the  im- 
passioned moral  life  of  Aletta  was  reproduced  in  him 
with  singular  completeness,  though  in  union  of  course 
with  the  more  masculine  and  masterful  spirit  derived 
from  his  father.  In  the  combination  of  the  strong 
sense  of  justice,  the  effective  public  talent,  the  com- 
manding skill,  patience,  and  energy,  by  which  Tescelin 
had  been  marked,  with  the  devout  sensibility,  the  spir- 
itual intensity,  and  the  fervent  intuition  of  duty  and 
of  truth,  which  Aletta  had  imparted,  rests  the  secret 
of  the  genius,  the  character,  and  the  work  for  which  he 
is  memorable. 

One  hardly  can  avoid  feeling  that  even  in  his  face, 
his  figure,  his  bearing,  the  mother  was  repeated  more 
distinctly  than  the  fattier.  The  elegance  of  his  person, 
the  beauty  of  his  face,  the  charming  grace  of  his  man- 

1  Sed  matria  sanctsB  memorU  importune  anirao  ejus  inetabat,  ita  ut 
flspina  dbi  occuirentem  videre  videretur,  conquerentem  et  impropeiantem, 
quia  non  ad  higusmodi  nugacitatem  tarn  tenere  educaveiat,  non  in  bac  spe 
enidierat  eunt  . .  .  Porro  Andreas,  Beniardo  etiam  ipse  junior,  et  novas 
eo  tempore  miles,  Terbam  fratris  difficilius  admittebat,  donee  subito  excla- 
mayit,  "  Video  matrem  meam  ! "  YisibUiter  siquidon  d  appamit,  serena 
fiune  subridens,  et  congratulans  proposito  filiorum.  Nee  solus  Ttdit  An- 
dress  tantorum  matrem  filiorum  letantem,  aed  confessus  est  et  Bemardns 
samdem  sinulitsr  se  vidisse.  —  Opera^  toI.  sec.,  Vits,  i.  coll.  9098-99. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  1&5 

ner,  were  recognized  in  his  youth.  ^  In  his  later  years 
he  is  described  as  of  about  the  middle  height,  but  ap- 
pearing taller;  very  thin,  with  light  golden  hair,  a  red- 
dish beard  which  in  age  became  mingled  with  white, 
cheeks  on  which  a  subtle  blush  easily  played,  with  eyes 
pure  and  dove-like,  with  a  singular  brightness  of  coun- 
tenance, and  with  his  whole  person  suffused,  as  through 
the  grace  of  his  spirit,  with  a  peculiar  and  winning 
charm. ^  Those  who  saw  his  physical  frailty,  and  yefc 
knew  of  his  labors,  felt  as  if  in  him  a  lamb  had  been 
harnessed  to  pull  a  plough ; '  yet  he  shared  in  all  the 
work  of  the  monastery,  while  taking  upon  himself  im- 
mense labors  from  without;  and  when  he  spoke  under 
excitement  it  was  noticed  that  all  trace  of  bodily  feeble- 
ness disappeared,  and  that  he  was  as  one  transfigured.  It 
seems  clear  enough  that  much  of  the  mother  appeared 
again  in  even  the  bodily  presence  of  the  son,  for  whom 
she  had  so  earnestly  prayed,  and  to  whose  life  she  had 
so  lai^ly  given  impulse  and  control. 

But  he  must  have  inherited  far  more  from  Aletta  than 
outward  grace  and  beauty  of  person, — even  the  ethereal 
properties  of  spirit  which  were  singularly  combined  in 
him  with  intellectual  force  and  with  dauntless  resolu- 
tion. It  is  by  these  that  he  seems  to  me  most  distinctly 
set  apart  from  ihe  other  principal  men  of  his  time,  as 
it  was  by  these  in  large  measure,  under  Ood's  assist- 
ance, that  he  became  for  an  entire  generation  the  most 
commanding  man  in  Europe. 

One  does  not  know,  for  example,  in  the  absence  of 
particular  information,  how  Tescelin  may  have  been 

^  Eleganti  corpore,  grata  facie  prttemineiiSy  saayiasiinis  omatua  mori* 
boB.  _yol.  see,  Vita,  i.  col.  2096. 

*  Opera,  vol.  aec.^  Vita,  ii.  col.  2417. 

*  Ao  si  agnus  ad  aratrum  alligatos  arare  cogeretor.  —  Vita,  ii.  col.  S4S6L 


•«/» 


156  BERNARD   OF  CLAIRVAUZ  : 

affected  bj  the  beauty  of  nature,  as  its  lovely  forms  and 
colors  presented  themselves  around  his  castle.  But 
from  what  we  know  of  his  judicial  and  martial  temper, 
and  of  his  customary  habit  of  life,  it  seems  natural  to 
infer  that  that  quiet  and  deep  enjoyment  in  the  visible 
works  of  God  which  Bernard  felt,  except  when  it  was 
transiently  expelled  by  some  critical  purpose  or  supe* 
rior  passion,  must  have  come  from  his  mother.  Every- 
thing shows  her  exquisite  sensibility,  her  delicate, 
refined,  responsive  spirit,  searching  after  God  wherever 
she  might  find  Him ;  and  as  she  must  often  have  gazed 
on  the  ranges  of  hills  —  the  C6te  d'Or,  or  "  Golden 
Slope  "  —  which  rose  on  the  west  before  the  castle, 
probably  already  terraced  with  vineyards,  rising  to  a 
table-land  shadowed  by  trees  and  luxuriant  with  grains 
and  grasses,  and  on  the  rich  landscape  which  lay  be- 
tween, it  is  at  least  not  improbable  that  an  influence 
from  the  scene  entered  into  her  life;  that  something 
of  peace,  uplift,  delight,  possibly  even  of  celestial  ex- 
pectation, came  with  it  to  her  soul;  that  to  her  illu- 
mined eyes  the  goodness  of  God  was  evident  through 
it,  as  through  a  transient  diaphanous  veil.  If  this  were 
so,  we  can  trace  to  its  origin  the  feeling  which  her  son 
fervently  expressed,  many  years  after,  when  he  said 
that  whatever  he  had  learned  of  the  Scriptures,  and  of 
their  spiritual  meaning,  had  chiefly  come  to  him  while 
he  was  meditating  and  praying  in  the  woods  or  the 
fields,  with  no  other  teachers  than  beech>trees  and 
oaks.^    In  the  same  sense  he  wrote  to  Heinrich  of  Mur- 

^  Nam  usque  hodie  qaidqoid  in  Scriptoris  valet,  qnidquid  in  eia  tpiri- 
tnaliter  aentit,  maxime  in  sUvis  et  in  agris  neditando  et  orando  ae  oonfite- 
tnr  aocepiaae ;  et  in  hoc  nuUos  aliqaando  ae  magbtros  habuisBe,  niai  qnerecis 
et  fagoa,  jooo  iUo  sno  gratioao  inter  amicoa  dicere  solet.  —  Optra^  vol.  sec. 
Vita,  L  ooL  2109. 


r 


HIS  PEB80NAL  CHABACTBRISTIGS.  157 

dach,  a  celebrated  teacher  of  scholastic  philosophy, 
afterward  Archbishop  of  York:  ^ Trust  one  who  has 
learned  by  experience !  Thou  wilt  find  something  lar- 
ger in  the  woods  than  in  books !  The  trees  and  rocks 
shall  teach  thee  what  thou  never  canst  learn  from 
human  masters.  Dost  thou  think  it  not  possible  to 
suck  honey  from  stones,  and  oil  from  the  flinty  rock  ? 
But  do  not  the  mountains  drop  sweetness,  and  the  hills 
flow  with  milk  and  honey,  and  the  valleys  stand  thick 
with  corn?  "  ^  His  supreme  lessons  were  always  from 
the  Scriptures,  which  he  studied,  in  the  form  in  which 
he  possessed  them,  with  an  assiduous  zeal  which  we  may 
well  emulate ;  but  he  found  great  lessons  and  inspiring 
suggestions  in  the  lovely  and  lofty  works  of  God,  and 
kept  for  these  an  open  sense.  It  is  something  quite 
remarkable,  certainly,  that  while  he  was  the  busiest 
man  of  his  time,  and  while  society  and  life  incessantly 
challenged  his  immediate  attention,  not  with  pictur- 
esque pageants,  but  with  great  religious  and  secular 
movements  on  which  he  was  prompt  to  impress  his 
force,  he  kept  always  his  relish  for  the  country,  and 
his  early  familiarity  with 

—  "  meadow,  grove,  and  stream, 
The  earth,  and  every  common  sight." 

Cities  oppressed,  while  the  silent  and  peaceful  scenes 
of  nature  revived  his  spirit.  I  cannot  but  think  that 
the  memory  and  the  influence  of  his  mother,  with  a 
touch  of  her  transmitted  temper,  had  contributed  to 
apparel  for  him  whatever  was  grand  or  charming  in 
the  earth  with  something  of  celestial  light 

1  Ezperto  erode:  aliqnid  amplius  invenies  in  silvis  qnam  in  libris. 
Ligna  et  lapides  docebnnt  te,  quod  a  magistris  audire  non  possis.  An  non 
patas  poeae  te  sugere  mel  de  petra,  oleumqne  dc  saxo  dnrissimo  ?  An  non 
montes  itillant  dtilcedinem,  et  colles  fluunt  lac  et  mel,  et  vallea  abandant 
firameDteT— Optra,  vol.  prim.,epiB.  cvi.  col.  288. 


168  BBRNABD  OP  CLAIBTAUZ  : 

But  other  traits,  more  essential  than  this,  and  more 
deeply  characteristic,  exhibit  this  distinct  maternal 
inheritance.  We  cannot  be  mistaken  in  finding  it  in 
the  tenderness  and  fervor  of  his  affectionate  nature. 
How  intense  this  was  in  him,  and  how  free  and  intense 
in  familiar  expression,  no  student  of  his  life  can  need 
to  be  reminded.  It  was  shown,  for  example,  when  his 
young  relative,  Robert,  had  left  Glairvaux,  to  enter  the 
wealthier  monastery  of  Clugni,  allured  by  its  less  exact- 
ing spirit  and  more  tolerant  indulgence.  The  heart  of 
Bernard  was  smitten  by  the  desertion  more  than  it 
could  have  been  by  physical  disaster,  while  it  was 
troubled  with  anxious  apprehension  for  the  spiritual 
safety  of  a  disciple  so  wanting  in  austerity  of  purpose^ 
and  yet  so  dear.  So  he  wrote  him  an  epistle  as  pas- 
sionate as  a  love-letter,  though  almost  as  extended  as 
a  treatise.  ^^ I  am  no  longer  able,"  he  said,  ^'to  veil 
my  grief,  to  suppress  my  anxiety,  to  dissemble  my  sor- 
row. Therefore,  contrary  to  the  order  of  justice,  I  who 
have  been  wounded  am  constrained  to  recall  him  who 
hath  wounded  me ;  I,  the  despised,  must  seek  after  him 
who  hath  despised  me;  after  suffering  injury,  I  must 
offer  satisfaction  to  him  from  whom  the  injury  has 
come ;  I  must,  in  a  word,  entreat  him  who  ought  rather 
to  entreat  me.  But  grief  does  not  deliberate,  it  knows 
no  shame,  it  does  not  consult  reason,  it  does  not  fear 
any  lowering  of  dignity,  does  not  conform  itself  to  rule, 
does  not  submit  itself  to  sound  judgment ;  it  ignores 
method  and  rule ;  the  mind  is  wholly  and  only  occupied 
with  this :  to  seek  to  be  rid  of  what  it  pains  it  to  have, 
or  to  gain  what  it  grieves  it  to  want.  ...  I  am  wretched 
because  I  miss  thee,  because  I  do  not  see  thee,  because 
I  live  without  thee,  for  whom  to  die  would  be  to  me  life, 
to  live  without  whom  is  to  die !   Only  come  back,  and  all 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARAGTBBI8TIC8.  159 

will  be  peace.  Betam,  and  I  shall  be  at  rest  Betam, 
I  say :  return !  and  I  shall  joyfully  sing,  ^  He  that  was 
dead  is  alive  again ;  he  was  lost,  and  is  found. '  No 
doubt  it  may  have  been  by  my  fault  that  you  departed. 
I  must  have  appeared  severe  to  so  delicate  a  youth,  and 
in  my  own  hardness  have  treated  thy  tenderness  too 
harshly.  .  .  .  What  I  say,  my  son,  I  do  not  say  to  con* 
found  thee,  but  to  admonish  my  most  dear  boy;  for 
though  thou  mayest  have  many  teachers  in  Christ,  thou 
hast  not  many  fathers.  If  thou  wilt  permit  me  to  say 
so,  I  myself  have  brought  thee  forth  into  the  life  of  re- 
ligion, by  instruction  and  example.  How  can  it  please 
thee  that  another  should  glory  in  thee  who  has  in  no 
way  labored  for  thee  ?  "  ^  The  whole  letter  from  which 
these  few  sentences  are  extracted  is  tumultuous  with 
emotion.  It  was  reported  among  the  monks  that  being 
dictated  to  a  scribe,  like  many  of  Bernard's,  it  was 
written  on  parchment  in  the  open  air,  and  that  when  a 
shower  fell  upon  everything  around,  the  fervor  of  love 
on  these  ardent  pages  kept  them  dry ;  wherefore  in  the 
collection  of  his  letters  it  was  placed  first*  The  mira- 
cle we  may  doubt  The  fervor  of  feeling  is  before  us ; 
and  it  is  pleasant  to  know  that,  though  its  immediate 
effect  was  not  apparent,  he  to  whom  it  was  addressed 
returned  later  to  Glairvaux,  and  afterward  lived  there, 
or  washimseUthe  head  of  a  monastery  in  the  diocese  of 
Besan^on,  many  years.' 

Another,  and  in  some  respects  a  still  more  remark- 
able, example  of  Bernard's  extreme  tenderness  of  feel- 
ing is  presented  in  the  sermon  which  he  preached  after 
the  death  of  his  brother  Gerard,  who  died  in  the  con- 

1  YoL  prim.,  epist  L,  ad  Bobertnm,  coll.  101-111. 

<  Open,  Tol.  MC,  Vita,  I  col.  8128. 

*  Opens  ▼ol-  sec,  Vita,  iv.  col.  2498 ;  lUtisboime,  torn.  L  p.  147* 


160  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUX  : 

vent  at  Clairvaux  when  Bernard  was  forty-Beven  years 
old.  At  first  it  was  noticed  that  the  abbot  performed 
his  duties  as  usual,  with  accustomed  regularity,  and  in 
a  seemingly  stoical  tranquillity.  But  when  he  began  to 
preach,  as  his  wont  was  at  the  time,  in  exposition  of  the 
Canticles,  his  special  text  for  the  day  being,  ^  As  the 
tents  of  Eedar,  as  the  curtains  of  Solomon, "  after  a  few 
introductory  sentences  his  exposition  was  suspended  by 
an  almost  volcanic  outburst  of  passionate  affection  and 
irresistible  grief.  Some  extracts  from  the  sermon  will 
sufficiently  present  this :  — 

^'  But  my  grief  commands  an  end,  and  the  calamity 
which  I  suffer !  How  long  shall  I  dissemble,  and  hide 
the  fire  within,  which  scorches  my  sad  heart,  consumes 
my  vitals!  Closely  shut  up,  it  secretly  spreads,  and 
rages  with  the  greater  fierceness.  What  have  t  to  do 
with  this  canticle,  who  am  myself  in  bitterness  of  soul  ? 
The  vehemence  of  grief  interrupts  my  purpose,  and  the 
indignation  of  the  Lord  drinks  up  my  spirit  He  has 
been  taken  from  me  through  whose  presence  my  studies 
of  Grod  were  wont  to  be  free,  and  with  him  my  very 
heart  has  forsaken  me.  But  hitherto  I  have  put  con* 
straint  upon  my  soul,  and  have  dissembled  until  now, 
lest  feeling  should  seem  to  conquer  faith.  While 
others  were  weeping,  I,  as  you  must  have  observed, 
followed  with  dry  eyes  the  unseen  corpse;  with  dry 
eyes  I  stood  at  the  tomb,  while  the  funeral  services 
were  being  performed.  Clad  in  priestly  robes,  I  com- 
pleted with  my  own  lips  the  customary  prayers-  With  " 
my  own  hands  I  cast  the  earth,  according  to  the  cus- 
tom, upon  the  dead  body  of  my  beloved,  soon  itself  to 
become  but  earth.  Those  who  saw  me  wept,  and  mar- 
velled that  I  did  not  also  weep ;  since  all  commiserated, 
not  him  certainly,  but  me  who  had  lost  him.      For 


HIS  PBBSONAL  CHABAGTEBISTIG8.  161 

whose  hearty  though  of  very  iron,  would  not  be  moved 
at  seeing  me  outliving  Gerard  ?  There  was  indeed  a 
loss  common  to  us  all,  but  in  comparison  with  my  in- 
dividual  bereavement  it  was  not  considered.  But  with 
whatever  forces  of  faith  I  could  command,  I  resisted 
my  feeling,  striving  against  myself,  not  to  be  vainly 
moved  by  this  allotment  of  nature,  this  payment  of  the 
debt  due  from  all  men,  this  customary  incident  of  our 
mortal  condition,  by  the  command  of  Him  who  is  pow- 
erful, the  judgment  of  Him  who  is  just^  the  stroke  of 
Him  who  is  terrible,  by  the  will  of  the  Lord.  In  this 
way  I  then  and  afterward  constrained  myself  to  refrain 
from  much  weeping,  however  heavily  troubled  and  full 
of  sorrow.  .  .  •  But  who  else  was  so  peculiarly  neces- 
sary to  me  ?  By  whom  was  I  equally  beloved  ?  He  was 
my  brother  by  blood,  still  more  my  brother  in  the  life 
of  religion.  I  was  infirm  in  body,  and  he  sustained 
me;  I  was  weak  in  spirit,  and  he  comforted  me; 
I  was  slu^sh  and  negligent,  and  he  spurred  me 
on;  careless  and  forgetful,  and  he  admonished  me. 
Oh,  wherefore  hast  thou  been  torn  from  me  ?  Why  art 
thou  thus  snatched  from  my  arms?  —  thou  man  of  one 
mind  with  myself,  thou  man  after  mine  own  heart! 
We  loved  each  other  in  life;  why  by  Death  are  we 
divided?  Oh,  most  bitter  separation,  which  nothing 
but  Death  could  have  wrought!  For  whom  would 
Oerard  living  have  left  me,  while  I  continued  in  life  ? 
It  is  wholly  the  work  of  Death,  this  horrible  divorce ! 
Who  would  not  have  spared  the  sweet  ties  of  our  mutual 
affection,  except  only  Death,  the  enemy  of  all  sweet- 
ness !  .  .  .  Why,  I  ask,  have  we  loved,  or  have  we  lost  ? 
Hard  condition !  But  mine,  not  his,  is  the  pitiable  lot 
For  thou,  dear  Brother,  if  thou  hast  left  those  dear  to 

thee  here,  hast  greeted  those  dearer  still!     But  what 

11 


162  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX  : 

consolation  remains  for  me  in  my  misery,  after  that 
thou  my  consoler  hast  gone  ?  .  .  .  Who  will  grant  it 
to  me  that  I  may  quickly  follow  thee  in  death  ?  For  I 
would  not  die  in  thy  place,  nor  defraud  thee  of  thy 
glory.  But  from  this  time  on  to  survive  thee  is  labor 
and  grief.  I  shall  live,  while  I  live,  in  bitterness  of 
soul ;  I  shall  live  in  sorrow ;  and  this  must  be  my  con* 
solation,  that  by  my  sorrow  I  shall  also  be  stricken 
prostrate.  .  .  .  Flow  out,  flow  out,  ye  eager  tears! 
Flow  out,  since  he  who  would  have  hindered  your  pas- 
sage himself  hath  passed !  Let  the  torrents  of  my  suf- 
fering head  be  opened,  and  the  fountains  of  waters 
burst  forth,  if  perhaps  they  may  wash  away  the  soils 
of  sin  1t>y  which  I  have  deserved  the  fierce  anger  of  God ! 
.  .  .  But  this  my  weeping  is  not  a  sign  of  unbelief,  it 
is  only  an  indication  of  our  human  condition ;  nor  be- 
cause I  mpan  when  smitten  do  I  accuse  Him  who 
smites.  Though  my  words  are  full  of  grief,  no  mur- 
muring is  in  them.  The  good  and  righteous  Qod  hath 
done  everything  well.  I  will  sing  to  thee,  0  Lord,  of 
mercy  and  judgment !  The  mercy  shall  sing  to  Thee, 
which  Thou  showedst  to  Thy  servant  Gerard ;  the  judg- 
ment shall  also  sing,  which  we  ourselves  bear.  As 
gracious  in  the  one  as  Thou  art  just  in  the  other,  Thou 
shalt  be  praised !  .  .  .  But  tears  again  put  an  end  to 
my  words.  Do  Thou,  0  Lord,  impose  the  measure  and 
the  end  of  the  tears  !  "  * 

I  cannot  but  think  that  even  such  fragmentary  ex- 
tracts from  prolonged  letters  and  discourses  must  give  us 
glimpses  of  the  heart  of  Bernard,  of  the  infinite  deeps 
of  his  tender  affection,  the  inexpressible  fulness  of  his 
passionate  pathos ;  and  I  am  as  sure  as  of  anything  not 
apparent  to  the  senses,  or  not  included  in  personal  con« 

^  opera,  toI.  prim.,  colL  2816*2827. 


HIS  PEBSONAL  CHARACTEBI8TIC8.  16S 

sciousnessy  that  this  had  come  to  him  as  a  vital  inheri* 
tance,  not  from  a  long  series  of  feudal  lords  and  fighting 
barons,  but  from  the  breast  of  the  tender,  devout,  heroic 
mother,  who  years  before  had  been  carried  to  her  grave. 
To  her  he  owed  it,  under  (}od,  that  while  strong  with 
the  strongest,  he  was  impassioned  and  fond  as  the  most 
ardent  woman;  and  it  was  her  spirit  in  him  which 
sighed  and  sorrowed,  or  rose  to  summits  of  Christian 
triumph. 

The  same  fine  quality  of  spirit^  feminine,  not  effemi- 
nate, gentle,  but  surpassingly  heroic,  appears  in  all  his 
character  and  life.  His  early  career  showed  it,  with 
his  passionate  fight  against  the  allurements  of  ambition 
or  of  lust.  The  record  of  his  conversion  sets  it  vividly 
before  us.  He  was  riding  toward  the  camp  of  the  Duke 
of  Burgundy,  to  join  his  brothers  who  were  already 
there  besieging  a  castle,  when  the  image  of  his  mother, 
disappointed  and  reproving,  took  possession  of  his  soul. 
He  retired  to  a  church  by  the  roadside  to  pray;  and 
there,  with  streaming  tears,  lifting  up  his  hands  toward 
heaven,  he  poured  out  his  heart  like  water  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Ood.  From  that  hour  his  course  was  deter- 
mined, and  his  purpose  unchangeable,  to  lead  a  wholly 
religious  life.^  The  charms  of  study  could  not  detain 
him;  the  prospect  of  rank  and  riches  in  the  Church 
never  for  a  moment  entangled  his  will;  there  was 
no  attraction  in  society  or  in  the  camp  to  allure  him 
from  his  purpose  of  a  supremely  consecrated  life.  With 
instantaneous  eagerness,  after  reaching  his  brothers, 

1  luTMitaqne  in  itinere  medio  ecclada  qnadam,  diTeitit,  et  ingreastu 
oi."nt  earn  malto  imbre  lacrymarnm,  expandens  manus  in  coelum,  et 
effuidens  sicnt  aqnam  cor  sunm  ante  conspectnm  Domini  Dei  eui.  Ea 
igitor  die  firmatum  eat  propoaitum  oordia  ejaa.  —  Opera^  vol.  aec..  Vita,  t 
eoL  9096. 


164  BBBNABD  OF  GLAIBVAUX  : 

he  sought  to  lead  them  to  join  him,  and  with  great 
delight  found  himself  in  this  strangely  sucoessfuL 
One  by  one,  yielding  to  his  impetuous  earnestness, 
they  formed  with  him  a  harmonious  company.  Gerard, 
the  second  son,  whose  death  afterward,  as  we  have 
seen,  moved  him  to  the  most  passionate  grief,  was  at 
the  time  a  daring  young  soldier,  wise  in  counsel,  fear- 
less in  action,  in  the  highest  repute,  and  he  proved  the 
hardest  to  be  gained ;  but  even  his  resistance  gave  way 
ere  long.  The  uncle,  also,  the  Lord  of  Touillon,  fol- 
lowed the  lead  of  the  impassioned  Bernard;  and  the 
youngest  of  the  household  group,  Nivard,  who  was  still 
a  child  playing  with  his  companions  at  home  in  the 
castle-area,  was  not  long  behind  the  others.^  Entering 
soon  after  into  a  church  with  those  thus  spiritually 
associated  with  him,  Bernard  heard  the  text  read: 
*^  Faithful  is  God,  because  He  who  hath  begun  a  good 
work  in  you  Himself  will  perfect  it,  unto  the  day  of 
Jesus  Christ,"  and  it  came  to  him  as  if  it  had  fallen 
directly  from  the  skies. ^  The  Spirit  of  God  seemed 
immediately  addressing  him,  through  the  words  written 
centuries  before  by  the  aged  apostle,  from  the  Roman 
Prffitorium. 

Yet  there  was  nothing  transient  or  spasmodic  in  the 
vividness  of  conviction  or  the  ardor  of  feeling  in  this 

1  The  story  of  the  boy,  NiTBid,  is  too  touching  in  itself,  and  too  signifi- 
eeat  of  the  religious  temper  of  the  household,  not  to  he  repeated :  — 

Yidens  autem  Ouido  primogenitus  fratrum  suoram  NiTardum  fratrem 
sunm  niinimuni,  puernm  cum  pueris  aliia  in  platea  :  "  Eia,*'  inquit,  **  frater 
Nivarde,  ad  te  solum  respicit  omnis  terra  possessionis  nostne."  Ad  quod 
pner,  non  pueriliter  motus :  '*  Yobis  ergo,"  inquit,  "  coelum,  et  mihi  terra  I 
Hon  ez  nquo  diyisio  hsc  facta  est/'  Quo  dicto  aheuntihus  iUis,  tunc 
qnidem  domi  cum  patre  remansit,  sed  modico  post  evoluto  tempoVB  fratres 
secutus,  nee  a  patre,  nee  a  propinquis  sen  amicis  pocnit  letinert  —  Optrm^ 
?ol.  sec.,Yita,  i.  coL  2104. 

«  Vita,  i,  col.  2101. 


HIS  PERAONAL  CHABACTERISTICS.  166 

high-hearted  and  sensitive  man.  His  enthusiasm  was 
rooted  in  a  deep  and  energetic  moral  life ;  it  was  there- 
fore continuous,  as  well  as  intense,  yielding  to  no  ob- 
stacle, quailing  before  no  vehement  resistance,  and 
counting  no  way  too  long  or  hard  if  it  led  to  \he  end 
supremely  before  him.  His  courage  was  as  perfect,  his 
fortitude  as  unyielding,  as  his  affection  was  tender,  his 
emotion  unrestrained.  Whatever  service  or  sacrifice 
seemed  needful  for  the  welfare  of  man,  as  he  under- 
stood this,  and  for  the  greater  glory  of  Gtod,  he  was 
instantly  ready  to  undertake;  and  he  swept  to  the 
performance  of  whatever  duty  with  such  an  unsparing 
and  inspiring  exertion  of  every  energy  as  certified  his 
followers  of  victory  beforehand,  and  made  it  nearly  as 
impossible  to  resist  him  as  to  stop  a  stone  hurled  from 
a  catapult.  A  man  more  entirely  sincere  and  unselfish 
in  his  spirit  and  aims  seems  hardly  to  have  lived  since 
the  Apostles;  and  certainly  one  more  free  from  limi- 
tations, through  any  fear  of  either  the  craft  or  the  vio- 
lence of  men,  seems  not  to  me  to  have  trodden  the 
eartli. 

When  the  great  Count  of  Champagne,  in  whose  ter- 
ritory lay  the  convent  of  Clairvaux,  had  inflicted  injus- 
tice on  one  of  his  vassals,  Bernard,  whose  heart  was 
tonched  by  the  suffering  of  the  man  ^d  of  his  family, 
first  applied  to  the  count  for  a  reparation  which  was 
not  given,  and  then  wrote  to  him  with  a  sharpness 
which  probably  no  other  man  in  the  province  would 
have  dared  to  use:  ^'If  1  had  asked  of  you  gold,  or 
silver,  or  anything  of  that  sort,  I  trust  you  so  far  as  to 
believe  that  without  doubt  I  should  have  received  them. 
But  why  do  I  say  ^if  I  had  asked '  ?  since,  not  asking 
at  all,  I  have  received  many  gifts  from  your  generosity. 
But  this  one  thing  which  I  have  asked,  not  for  my  sake 


166  BERNARD  OF  GLAIBYAUX  : 

but  for  God's  sake,  not  for  myself  so  mnch  as  for  you, 
from  yourself, — what  reason  exists  why  I  am  not  worthy 
to  receive  it  ?  .  •  .  Do  you  not  fear  that  word  of  the 
Scripture,  ^with  whatsoever  measure  ye  mete,  it  shall 
be  measured  to  you  again '  ?  Do  you  not  know  that  as 
easily  as  you  have  disinherited  Humbert, — as  easily? 
yea,  incomparably  more  easily, —  God  can  cast  you  out 
from  the  heavenly  inheritance  ?  "  The  count  promised 
to  restore  his  goods  to  the  injured  man,  with  his  an- 
nulled rights ;  but,  apparently  through  the  opposition  of 
some  who  had  been  profiting  by  the  injustice,  he  failed 
to  do  this ;  whereupon  Bernard  wrote  him  again,  regret- 
ting that  he  had  to  be  troublesome  to  one  whose  atten- 
tion was  engaged  with  other  matters,  but  saying :  ^  If 
I  fear  to  offend  you  by  such  repeated  writing,  how  much 
more  must  I  fear  to  offend  God,  to  whom  I  owe  the 
greater  reverence,  by  failing  to  intercede  on  behalf  of 
the  suffering !  I  return  my  thanks  for  the  favor  which 
in  this  matter  I  have  found  in  your  eyes,  that  you  have 
worthily  accepted  the  defence  of  Humbert,  and  have 
most  justly  repelled  the  false  accusation  against  him. 
But  when  you  have  decided  that  the  inheritance  of  his 
wife  and  children  shall  be  returned  to  them,  I  cannot 
enough  wonder  what  it  is  which  hinders  so  pious  a 
sentence  from  being  followed  by  suitable  action.  .  •  • 
Falsely,  not  truly,  does  he  est'Cem  you,  fraudulent  and 
not  faithful  is  his  counsel,  who  tries  to  obscure  your 
noble  fame  for  truth  in  the  interest  of  his  own  avarice ; 
who,  through  what  malice  I  know  not,  to  accomplish 
his  purpose  on  the  suffering  poor,  would  empty  of  mean- 
ing the  word  which  your  own  lips  have  spoken,  a  word 
well-pleasing  to  God,  worthy  of  yourself,  religiously 
just,  and  righteously  religious.  Do  this,  that  the  truth 
of  your  promise  may  be  fully  shown !    Let  the  inheri* 


HIB  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  167 

tance  of  Humbert  be  restored  to  his  wife  and  his  chil- 
dren/'^ The  powerful  and  irresponsible  sovereign  of 
the  province,  grandson  of  William  the  Conqueror,  so 
rich  in  treasures  and  in  troops  that  he  faced  without 
fear  the  king  of  France  in  equal  battle,  was  no  more  to 
Bernard  than  a  hind  at  the  plough,  when  he  was  tardy 
in  doing  justice.  Nor  could  his  personal  kindness  blind, 
any  more  than  the  reach  of  his  power  could  daunt,  tne 
clear-sighted  and  invincible  spirit 

A  yet  more  signal  instance  of  his  extraordinary  fear- 
lessness was  given  later,  a.d.  1135.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  in  biography,  seeming  almost  to 
belong  to  the  pages  of  romance.  William,  Duke 
of  Aquitaine,  whose  dominion  extended  over  Poitou, 
Limousin,  the  old  Duchy  of  Gascony,  covering  the  rich 
regions  of  southwestern  France,  with  a  still  wider  col- 
lateral sovereignty,  had  expelled  certain  bishops  from 
their  sees,  and  supplied  their  places  with  allies  of  his 
own,  whom  he  afterward  refused  to  remove.  He  was 
a  man  of  vaat  stature  and  of  almost  gigantic  strength, 
handsome  and  haughty,  with  a  peculiarly  violent,  sen- 
sual, and  intractable  temper.^    He  was  controlled  by  no 

^  Opera,  Tol.  prim.,  epist  zzxyii.,  xxxviii.,  coU.  188-185. 

'  He  was  the  father  of  Eleanor,  the  tarbulent  and  imperioas  queen  of 
Looia  Seventh  of  France,  and,  after  her  separation  from  him,  of  Henry 
Second  of  England.  Her  aon  Richard,  Coeur  de  Lion,  inherited  some  of 
the  qoalities  of  the  grandfather,  of  whom  Ratisbonne  gives  a  sufficient 
description:  — 

ileyi  an  milieu  des  pompes  d*une  conr  splendide,  il  roontra  dte  son  has 
ftge  un  caract^re  indomptable  et  nne  faneste  inclination  an  mal.  .  .  . 
Homme  brillant  et  prodigne,  avec  les  forces  d*un  athlete  et  la  taille  d'un 
giant,  bon  chevalier  d'armes,  dit  un  vieuz  ^rivain,  il  r^nnissait  dans  sa 
peiBonne  U  beanti  et  la  force,  et  se  montrait  k  tout  venant  redoutable  et 
qnereUenr.  .  .  .  C'itait  un  Nemrod  ]jar  sa  passion  de  bataiUer ;  un  dieu  Bel 
par  la  quantity  de  viandes  qu*il  mangeait ;  un  Hirode  par  ses  crimes  et  ses 
incestes ;  et  il  se  vantait,  comme  les  gens  de  Sodome,  de  ses  ignominies.  — 
Sid.  d$  8L  Bitnard,  tomt.  pp.  374-275. 


168  BERNARD  OF  OUSHYAVXl 

legal  aothority  in  his  wide  domains,  while  his  fierce 
and  vicious  animal  life  made  him  habitoally  disdainful 
toward  r6ligion.  Already,  four  years  before,  Bernard 
had  had  an  interview  with  him  at  the  monastery  of 
Ghatelliers,  but  had  failed  to  make  any  lasting  impres- 
sion, the  duke  returning  with  new  eagerness  to  his  exe- 
crable life,  as  if  to  stifle  any  remorse  awakened  by  the 
fervent  monk.  Toward  the  Bishop  of  Poictiers,  espe- 
cially, he  had  shown  an  almost  delirious  fury.  To  this 
remorseless  and  terrible  ruffian,  savage  in  spirit,  un- 
controllable, and  fenced  about  with  all  resources  of 
hmnan  strength,  now  again  came  Bernard,  as  the  asso- 
ciate of  Geoffrey,  the  Bishop  of  Ghartres,  who  had  been 
appointed  Papal  legate.  The  stubborn  and  rebellious 
count  readily  enough  consented  to  recognize  Innocent 
as  Pope,  but  he  utterly  refused  to  return  to  their  sees 
the  deposed  bishops.  They  had  offended  him  past  for- 
giveness ;  and  he  had  sworn  a  tremendous  oath  never  to 
be  reconciled  to  them.  It  was  almost  like  reasoning 
with  a  tropical  storm,  or  addressing  arguments  to  the 
brutal  fierceness  of  a  wild  beast  Bernard  broke  off 
the  useless  discussion,  and  proceeded  to  the  church  to 
celebrate  mass.  The  count  was  compelled  to  remain 
at  the  door,  as  one  beneath  the  censure  of  the  Church. 
When  the  host  had  been  consecrated,  Bernard,  with 
lifted  arms  and  flashing  face,  and  with  eyes  that  burned 
with  indignant  menace,  advanced  directly  to  him  with 
the  paten  in  his  hands,  and  said  in  tones  of  terrible 
authority:  "We  have  besought  you,  and  you  have 
spurned  us.  This  united  multitude  of  the  servants  of 
Gk>d,  meeting  you  elsewhere,  has  entreated  you,  and 
you  have  despised  them.  Behold,  here  comes  to  you 
the  Virgin's  Son,  the  Head  and  Lord  of  the  Church 
which  you  persecute!     Your  Judge  is  here,  at  whose 


ma  PERSONAL  CHABACTEBI8TICS.  169 

name  every  knee  shall  bow,  of  things  in  heaven,  and 
things  on  earth,  and  things  under  the  earth!  Your 
Judge  is  here,  into  whose  hands  your  soul  is  to  pass ! 
Will  70U  spurn  Him,  also  ?  Will  you  despise  Him,  as 
you  have  despised  His  servants  ? "  An  awful  silence 
fell  on  the  assembly,  and  a  dread  expectation,  as  if 
miracles  were  impending.  The  furious  and  impla- 
cable count,  pierced  in  spirit,  fell  to  the  ground  with 
loosened  and  unsupporting  limbs,  and  lay  there,  prone, 
speechless,  insensible.  Lifted  by  his  knights,  he  could 
not  stand  or  speak  or  see,  and  fell  again,  foaming  at 
the  mouth.  Bernard  bade  him  rise,  and  listen  stand- 
ing to  the  judgment  of  God.  He  presented  the  Bishop 
of  Poictiers,  who  had  been  violently  expelled  from  his 
see,  and  commanded  the  count  to  give  him  then  and 
there  the  kiss  of  peace,  and  restore  him  to  his  throne. 

The  terrible  soldier  did  not  dare  to  answer,  nor  was 
he  able ;  but  he  meekly  obeyed,  and  with  a  kiss  led  the 
bishop  to  his  place.  He  who  had  an  army  at  his  back, 
and  who  himself  could  have  smitten  Bernard  into  in- 
stant death  with  one  swift  blow  of  fist  or  mace,  yielded 
to  the  onset  of  his  overwhelming  and  incalculable  will. 
Nor  only  for  the  time ;  he  gave  himself  up,  from  that 
time  on,  to  repentance  for^sin,  and  the  service  of  reli- 
gion. He  is  said  to  have  died  not  long  after,  on  a 
penitential  visit  to  the  shrine  of  Saint  Jacques,  at 
Compostella.  His  stubborn  spirit  had  been  broken 
and  blasted  in  that  awful  encounter.  The  piercing 
eyes  of  the  tender  but  intense  and  terrific  Bernard  had 
been  to  him  almost  literally  prophetic  of  those  which 
shall  be  seen  hereafter  as  ^  flames  of  fire. "  ^ 

1  The  ftill  account  of  this  remarkable  scene  is  to  be  found  in  the  Vita,  L 
lib.  2,  Tol.  sec  coll.  2171-78.  Some  of  the  expressions  are  reiy  striking : 
**  Vir  Dei,  Jam  non  se  agens  ut  hominem,  corpus  Domini  super  patenam 


170  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

It  was  not  in  contacts  with  snch  men  only,  rude  and 
hard-nerved,  that  the  Abbot  of  Glairvaux  showed  the 
intrepid  and  perfect  daring  which  had  come  to  him,  no 
doubt,  from  both  father  and  mother,  but  in  which  a 
flash  of  feminine  intensity  seems  especially  evident 
It  gave  a  certain  decisiveness  to  his  idiom,  which 
even  an  indifferent  reader  must  recognize.  Thus  in  a 
great  council  at  Rheims,  where  a  question  of  the  Divine 
nature  was  being  discussed  before  the  Pope  and  the  car- 
dinals, with  the  more  learned  of  the  clergy  of  France, 
Bernard  asked  that  certain  words  of  a  powerful  bishop 
whose  doctrine  he  was  controverting  be  written  down, 
which  accordingly  was  done.  But  Bernard  himself,  in 
continuing  the  discussion,  having  used  a  form  of  words 
displeasing  to  the  cardinals,  who  favored  his  opponent^ 
the  irritated  bishop  demanded  that  his  words  also  be 
written  down.  "  Yea ! "  said  Bernard,  with  the  vehe- 
ment firmness  which  no  assault  could  disturb,  ^^Let 
them  be  written  with  an  iron  pen,  with  a  point  of  ada- 
mant, and  be  graven  in  the  rock ! "  —  repeating  the 
words  with  new  emphasis  as  he  spoke.' 

When  Louis  Seventh  of  France,  enraged  against  the 
Count  of  Champagne,  invaded  the  province,  and  laid  it 
waste  with  firo  and  sword,  and  when  Theobald,  deserted 
by  his  vassals,  could  not  resist  him,  Bernard  wrote  to 
the  king  in  words  of  indignant  and  effective  rebuke: 

ponit  et  secnm  tollit,  atque  ignea  facie,  et  flammeiB  oculU,  non  aupplicans, 
sed  minaz  foras  egreditur,  et  verbis  terribilibns  aggreditur  Ducem.  .  .  . 
Lacrymabantur  aniveni  qui  aderant,  et  oratioiiibaa  intenti  pnestolabantur 
ezitum  rei ;  et  omnium  suspensa  ezspectatio,  nescio  quid  divinam  fieri  cod- 
lituB  exspectabat.  Videos  Comes  Abbatem  in  spirita  vehementi  prooeden- 
tem,  et  sacratissimum  Domini  Corpus  ferentem  in  manibns^  expavit  et 
diriguit,  membrisque  tremebundis  metu  et  disaolutis,  quasi  aoMDa  solo 
provolvitur." 

^  Opera,  toI.  sec.,  epist  Ganfl  col.  2566. 


HIS  PEBSONAL  0HABAGTERI8TICS.  171 

« 

^  All  too  quickly  and  too  lightly  have  you  started  back 
from  the  good  and  healthful  counsel  which  you  had 
accepted,  and  again  have  hastily  returned,  as  I  hear, 
through  I  know  not  what  diabolical  suggestion,  to  the 
evils  which  lately  you  were  sorry  to  have  perpetrated. 
From  whom,  I  say,  except  from  the  Devil,  can  have 
proceeded  this  counsel,  by  which  it  comes  to  pass  that 
fires  are  added  to  fires,  murders  to  murders,  while  the 
cries  of  the  poor,  the  groans  of  the  chained,  the  blood 
of  the  slain,  sound  in  the  ears  of  Him  who  is  the  Father 
of  the  fatherless,  and  the  Judge  of  widows !  Plainly, 
with  such  sacrifices  the  ancient  enemy  of  our  race  may 
be  well  pleased,  since  he  was  a  murderer  from  the  be- 
ginning. .  .  .  You  have  not  listened  to  words  of  peace, 
nor  kept  your  own  compacts,  nor  hearkened  to  wise 
counsel :  but,  I  know  not  under  what  judgment  of  God, 
you  have  so  perverted  everything  as  to  count  shame 
honor,  and  honor  shame ;  you  have  been  afraid  of  what 
was  safe,  and  have  despised  what  ought  to  be  feared; 
you  have  loved  those  who  hated  you,  and  have  held  in 
hatred  those  who  desired  to  love  you.  They  who  have 
incited  you  to  repeat  your  old  malice  against  those  who 
have  not  offended  have  sought,  not  your  honor,  but  their 
advantage;  yea,  not  so  much  their  own  advantage  as 
the  good  pleasure  of  the  Devil.  ...  In  the  murders 
of  men,  the  burning  of  dwellings,  the  destruction  of 
churches,  the  scattering  of  the  poor,  you  take  part  with 
the  robbers  and  ruffians,  according  to  the  word  of  the 
prophet,  ^When  you  saw  a  thief  you  ran  in  company 
with  him,  and  took  your  portion  with  adulterers ; '  as 
if  you  had  not  strength  enough  in  yourself  to  do  evil. 
«  .  •  I  admonish  and  faithfully  counsel  you  quickly  to 
desist  from  these  malign  courses,  if  perchance  by  peni- 
tence and  humility  you  may  stay  the  hand  of  Him  who 


172  BERNARD   OF  CLAIRTAUZ  : 

is  preparing  to  smite  you,  after  the.  example  of  the 
Ninevite  king.  I  speak  harshly,  because  I  fear  harder 
things  in  reserve  for  you ;  but  remember  what  was  said 
by  the  wise  man,  ^Better  are  the  wounds  of  a  friend 
than  the  false  kiss  of  an  enemy. '  "  ^ 

The  fervent  and  majestic  rebuke  of  Bernard  was  not 
instantly  effective ;  but  after  a  time  it  took  effect,  and 
the  subsequent  readiness  of  Louis  to  engage  in  the 
second  crusade  is  attributed  in  part  to  the  remorse 
which  he  felt  at  the  cruelties  of  the  war  which  the 
abbot  had  denounced.  He  became  so  completely  recon- 
ciled to  Theobald  as  afterward  to  marry  his  daughter. 

There  was  less  of  indignant  severity,  but  certainly 
not  less  of  an  almost  startling  moral  audacity,  in  Ber- 
nard's address  to  Henry  of  Normandy,  king  of  England, 
when  he  sought  from  him  an  acknowledgment  of  Iimo- 
cent  as  the  Pope.  The  English  bishops  being  opposed 
to  this,  the  king  hesitated  and  practically  refused. 
^^What  are  you  afraid  of?"  was  the  passionate  and 
successful  appeal  of  Bernard.  '^Do  you  fear  to  incur 
sin  by  recognizing  Innocent  as  pontiff  ?  Enow  that  for 
your  other  sins  you  shall  give  account  for  yourself  unto 
Grod.  Leave  this  one  to  me !  The  whole  sin  shall  rest 
upon  myself.'** 

To  the  Pope  himself,  whom  he  revered  in  his  office 
as  the  divinely  appointed  Head  of  the  Church,  he 
wrote  in  sharpest  remonstrance,  with  a  criticism  which 
scorched,  when  occasion  demanded.  Innocent  Second 
had  failed  to  fulfil  a  promise  made  for  him,  on  his 
authority,  by  Bernard,  and  the  letters  which  the  latter 
had  written  on  the  matter  had  not  been  effective.  Then 
went  another  from  Glairvaux,   which    could    not   be 

1  Opera,  vol.  prim.,  epist.  ccxzi.  60II.  449-451. 
*  Opera,  toI.  sec,  Vita,  i.  lib.  ii.  col.  2148. 


HIS  PEBSONAL  CHABACTERIBTICS.  178 

nnheeded:  ^^Who  shall  execute  justice  for  me  upon 
you  ?  If  1  had  any  judge  before  whom  I  might  cite  you, 
I  would  instantly  show  you  —  I  speak  this  as  one  tra- 
Tailing  in  pain  —  what  you  have  deserved  at  my  hands. 
There  stands,  indeed,  the  tribunal  of  Christ;  but  God 
forbid  that  I  should  summon  you  before  that;  I,  who 
would  rather,  if  it  were  needful  for  you  or  possible  to 
me,  stand  there  in  your  place  with  all  my  strength,  and 
make  answer  to  the  Judge  on  your  behalf.  I  return, 
therefore,  to  him  to  whom  it  is  given  for  the  present  to 
be  the  Judge  in  the  world,  that  is,  to  yourself ;  I  sum- 
mon you  to  answer  to  yourself ;  judge  you,  between  me 
and  you."^ 

So  he  wrote  to  the  same  pontifiF,  on  another  occa- 
sion: ^^I  speak  faithfully,  because  I  love  truly.  .  .  . 
It  is  the  united  voice  of  all  among  us  who  with 
faithful  care  preside  over  the  people,  that  justice  per- 
ishes in  the  Church,  that  the  power  of  the  keys  is  an- 
nulled, and  Episcopal  authority  is  brought  to  contempt; 
since  no  bishop  has  it  in  his  power  to  avenge  injuries 
done  to  Grod,  nor  can  any  one  punish  unlawful  things 
in  his  own  diocese.  They  attribute  the  cause  of  this  to 
you,  and  to  the  Roman  Curia.  Things  rightly  done  by 
them,  they  say,  are  overturned  by  you;  things  justly 
destroyed,  you  re-establish.  Whoever  are  criminal  or 
quarrelsome  among  either  people  or  clergy,  with  monks 
outcast  from  their  monasteries,  rush  to  you;  and 
returning  they  boast,  with  passionate  gestures,  that 
they  have  foimd  protectors  where  they  should  have 
found  punishers.  .  .  .  For  shame!  the  thing  moves 
and  will  move  derisive  laughter  among  the  enemies  of 
the  Church,  those,  even,  by  whose  fear  or  favor  you 
have  been  led  from  the  right  way.     Tour  friends  are 

1  Opera,  toI.  prim.,  epist.  ccxiii.  coL  440. 


1T4  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  ; 

confounded ;  the  faithful  are  insulted ;  and  the  bishops 
are  brought  everywhere  to  opprobrium  and  contempt, 
their  just  judgments  being  despised,  to  the  damage  most 
of  all  of  your  own  authority. "  ^ 

To  Eugenius  Third,  a  succeeding  pontiff,  who  had 
been  one  of  his  own  monastic  pupils,  Bernard  wrote  in 
admonitory  words  which  have  the  key  to  his  own  life  in 
them :  '^  In  all  thy  works  remember  that  thou  art  but  a 
man,  and  let  the  fear  of  Him  who  taketh  away  the  breath 
of  princes  be  continually  before  thine  eyes!  Of  how 
many  Roman  pontiffs  hast  thou  with  thine  own  eyes 
seen  the  death,  in  a  brief  space  of  time!  Let  these 
thy  predecessors  admonish  thee  of  thine  own  most  cer- 
tain soon-coming  decease !  that  the  brief  time  of  their 
domination  may  declare  to  thee  the  fewness  of  thine 
own  days.  Amid  the  blandishments  of  the  present  pass- 
ing glory,  remember  thine  own  recent  estate ;  because 
those  whom  thou  now  foUowest  in  the  Holy  See  thou 
shalt  also  certainly  soon  follow  in  death. "  ^  Again  he 
wrote  to  him,  more  at  length,  in  his  tract  on  Considera- 
tion: ^^  Brush  aside  the  deceit  of  the  fugitive  honor, 
despise  the  glitter  of  the  painted  pomp,  and  think  of 
thyself  simply  as  naked,  even  as  thou  earnest  from  the 
mother^s  womb!  Art  thou  ornamented  with  badges, 
shining  with  jewels,  brilliant  in  silks,  crowned  with 
plumes,  stuffed  out  with  golden  and  silver  embroid- 
eries ?  If  thou  shalt  expel  from  contemplation  all  these 
things,  so  swiftly  passing  and  soon  utterly  to  vanish 
like  morning  mists,  there  will  appear  to  thee  a  man, 
naked,  poor,  needy,  miserable,  grieving  because  he  is  a 
man,  blushing  at  his  nakedness,  deploring  his  birth ;  a 
man  bom  to  labor,  not  to  honor;  born  of  a  woman,  and 

^  Vol.  prim.,  epist.  clxxviil.  col.  898. 

*  Open,  voL  prim.,  epist.  ccxxzviii.  col.  503). 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  1T5 

SO  under  condemnation;  living  only  a  little  while, 
and  therefore  full  of  fear;  replete  with  miseries,  and 
weeping  because  of  them. "  ^  He  admonished  him  that 
the  Church  was  full  of  ambitious  men,  who  would  be 
importunate  in  requests,  but  that  if  he  were  himself  to 
hear  any  causes  brought  before  him  by  appeal  they 
must  be  the  cause  of  the  widow,  the  cause  of  the  poor, 
and  of  him  who  had  no  bribe  to  offer  ;^  and  he  set  bo- 
fore  him,  with  unswerving  and  majestic  distinctness, 
the  moral  image  of  a  true  Pope, — writing  it,  manifestly, 
with  a  rush  of  feeling  which  made  every  word  a  separate 
force :  — 

^Remember,  first  of  all,  that  the  holy  Roman 
Church,  over  which  thou  art  chief,  is  the  mother  of 
churches,  not  their  sovereign  mistress ;  that  thou  thy> 
self  art  not  the  Lord  of  bishops,  but  one  among  them,^ 
a  brother  of  those  delighting  in  God,  and  a  partaker 
with  those  that  fear  Him.  For  the  rest,  regard  thyself 
as  under  obligation  to  be  the  figure  of  justice,  the  mir- 
ror of  holiness,  the  exemplar  of  piety,  the  restorer  of 
its  freedom  to  .truth,  the  defender  of  the  faith,  the 
teacher  of  nations,  the  guide  of  Christians,  the  friend 
of  the  Bridegroom,  the  bridesman  of  the  Bride,  the 
regulator  of  the  clergy,  the  pastor  of  the  people,  the 
master  of  the  foolish,  the  refuge  of  the  oppressed, 
the  advocate  of  the  poor,  the  hope  of  the  suffering,  the 
protector  of  orphans,  the  judge  of  widows,  eyes  to  the 
blind,  a  tongue  to  the  dumb,  the  staff  of  the  aged,  an 
avenger  of  crimes,  a  terror  to  evil-doers,  and  a  glory  to 

1  Opera,  toI.  prim.,  De  Gonsid.,  u.  9,  col.  1084. 

s  IhicL,  coL  1019. 

*  "Conaideres  ante  omnia  aanctam  fiomanam  Ecclesiam,  cni  Deo  aactor 
pnoea,  Eccleaiarum  matrem  esse,  non  dominam ;  te  vero  non  dominum  epi»- 
coponim,  sed  unnm  ex  ipais; "  etc.,  coL  1070. 


176  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBTAUZ  : 

the  good,  a  rod  for  the  powerful,  a  hammer  for  fyrantSy 
the  father  of  kings,  the  director  of  laws,  the  superin- 
tendent of  canons,  the  salt  of  the  earth,  the  light  of  the 
world,  the  priest  of  the  Most  High,  the  vicar  of  Christy 
the  anointed  of  the  Lord.  Remember  what  I  say, "  he 
adds,  ^  and  the  Lord  give  thee  understanding. "  ^ 

It  was  something,  certainly,  in  that  time  of  confu- 
sion, ambition,  fear,  when  pontifical  authority  had  come 
so  widely  to  overshadow  the  Continent^  to  have  present 
a  man  like  this,  whose  voice  must  be  heard,  and  who 
fearlessly  presented  to  pontiffs  themselves  the  duty 
which  belonged  to  their  eminent  station.  He  at  any 
rate  repeated  before  them,  with  a  more  sublime  em- 
phasis than  any  music  could  give,  the  words  which  used 
to  be  sung  at  their  coronation, — which  perhaps  are  still 
sung  there,  while  the  light  flax  blazes  in  a  cresset, — 
^^  Sic  transit  gloria  mundi ! ''  One  cannot  but  see,  too, 
that  Bernard's  own  ideal  of  the  true  Christian  spirit 
and  service  is  vividly  expressed  in  his  words.  He  has 
outlined  himself,  however  unconsciously,  in  his  letters 
to  the  Pope. 

But  his  courage  was  not  shown  toward  prelates  alone, 
or  toward  princes  and  kings.  It  faced  as  well,  with 
dauntless  composure,  the  fury  of  the  mob,  and  was  com- 
bined with  a  compassion  which  only  matched  its  more 
than  knightly  intrepidity.  One  instance  will  suffice  to 
exhibit  this. 

It  is  nearly  impossible  for  us  to  understand  the  con- 
dition of  the  Jews  in  western  Europe  in  the  time  of 
Bernard.  The  religion  of  the  age  hated  and  cursed 
them,  as  being  the  descendants  of  the  murderers  of  the 
Lord,  who  would  doubtless  gladly  repeat  the  crime  if 
they  had  opportunity.      The  wealth  which  they  had 

1  Open,  Yol.  prim.,  De  Considentione,  lib.  iy.  coll.  1070-72. 


HIS  PBBSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  177 

acquired  by  trading  or  by  usury  exposed  them  to  fierce 
envy,  and  drew  upon  them  the  revengeful  passion  of 
those  whom  they  had  cheated,  or  of  those  whom  they 
surpassed.  Despised  and  outcast  as  they  were,  into 
the  Jewish  scrip  or  wallet  fortresses  had  melted.  The 
coarse  gabardine  often  covered  wealth  for  which  a  hun- 
dred rufiians  hungered.  Their  swarthy  complexion  and 
Semitic  features  set  them  apart  from  the  (Gallic  and 
Teutonic  peoples;  and  they  might  not  dwell  where 
others  did.  The  most  frightful  rumors  concerning 
their  crimes  found  ready  acceptance:  that  they  stole 
Christian  children,  crucified  them  privately,^  and  used 
their  entrails  for  purposes  of  magic;  that  they  stole 
the  wafers  in  which  the  body  of  Christ  was  presented, 
stabbed  them  with  stilettos,  boiled  them  in  oil,  or 
slowly  though  frantically  roasted  them  on  coals.  The 
populace  was  easily  stirred  against  them  to  a  fury  which 
knew  no  limit  of  reason.  If  they  fled,  that  was  taken 
as  proof  of  their  guilt  If  they  remained,  they  were 
held  guilty  of  contumacy,  and  of  malignant  defiance. 
No  one  could  intercede  for  them  without  incurring  hate- 
ful suspicions.  Even  wise  and  good  men,  like  Peter 
the  Venerable,  accused  them  of  getting  possession  of 

>  ICfttthew  Paris  sapplies  in  incidental  iUustration  of  wbat  is  said  tiboy% 
in  mentioning  an  incident  which  oooarred  in  London  a  handled  years 
later  [A.D.  1244] :  — 

Sodsm  yero  anno,  inyentom  est  oorpaBcolam  cigQsdam  pneri  masculi 
inhnmatom  in  cimiterio  Sancti  Benedicti,  in  ci^jns  cmrihns  et  brachiis  et 
•ab  mamiUia  Uteris  Hebraids  regulariter  init  inscriptnm. .  . .  Credebant 
etiani.  neo  sine  causa,  qnod  Judiei  ipsnm  paenilum  in  Jesa  Chriati  impro- 
perinm  et  oontnmeliam,  qnod  freqaenter  relatam  est  aecidisse,  yd  cruci- 
fixersnt  yd  oradfigendam  yariis  tonnentis  exagitarerant,  et  com  jam 
exspinssety  earn  cnid  indignnm  iliac  projecisse.  .  .  .  Interim  qaidam  Ju- 
dsBOfiim  Londoniendam  clandeatinam  et  repentinam  fugam  inienmt  irre- 
dituri,  qni  eo  ipso  se  sospeetos  merito  reddideront  —  Chron,  Mu^.,  yoL  iy. 
p.  877.    London  ed.,  1877. 

12 


178  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

the  sacred  vessels  of  the  Church,  and  applying  these 
to  the  basest  uses;  and  while  he  did  not  recommend 
that  they  be  killed  off-hand,  he  did  advise  that  they 
receive  punishments  commensurate  with  what  he  es- 
teemed their  offences ;  that  though  life  be  spared,  they 
be  plundered  of  their  money. ^ 

Especially  when  the  temper  which  prompted  the 
crusades  was  sweeping  with  passionate  violence  over 
Europe,  it  was  natural  that  animosity  to  the  Jews 
should  rise  to  the  very  fever-point.  *To  kill  the  ene- 
mies of  the  cross  in  Palestine  ?  Certainly !  But  why 
not,  first  of  all,  in  our  own  streets,  these  greedy,  greasy, 
hook-nosed  descendants  of  the  howling  mob  which  car- 
ried  Christ  to  his  Calvary  ?  Kill  them ;  and  then  the 
less  obnoxious  Saracens ! '  Such  was  the  temper  of  the 
time  that  when  Rudolph,  a  stubborn  and  sanguinary 
German  monk,  declared  himself  commissioned  of  the 
Lord  to  undertake  this  home-crusade,  and  preached 
along  the  Rhine  ^  Death  to  the  Jews, "  he  had  at  once 

1  Si  detestandi  sunt  Sarraceni,  quia  qnaniTis  ChriBtam  de  Viif^me  at  no* 
Datum  fateantar,  multaque  de  ipso  nobiscum  sentianty  tamen  Denm  Ddque 
Filiom  (quod  majus  est)  negant,  mortemque  ipains  ac  resurrectioDem,  in 
quibns  tota  summa  salntia  Doetne  est,  diffitentar,  quantum  exaecraodi  et 
odio  habendi  sunt  Judsi,  qui  nihil  proreus  de  Ghristo  rt\  fide  ChristiaDa 
sentientes,  ipeum  virgeneum  partum,  cunctaque  redemptionia  humana 
sacramenta  abjiciunt,  blasphemant,  subsaunant  ? .  .  .  Sentit  plane  in  his 
quae  non  sentiunt  sibi  sacratis  vasis,  Jndaicas  adhnc  contumelias  Christus, 
quia,  ut  saepe  a  yeradbus  riris  audivi,  eia  usibua  cceleatia  ilia  vasa  ad  ejus- 
dem  Christi  noetrumque  dedecus  nefandi  illi  applicant ;  quod  horrendnm 
est  cogitare,  et  detestandum  dicere. .  .  .  Reseiretur  eis  yita,  auferatur  pe- 
cunia,  ut  per  deztras  Cbristianorum,  adjutas  pecuniis  blasphemantium 
Judnorum,  expugnetur  infidelium  audacia  Sarracenorum.  Serviant  popolts 
Obristianis,  etiam  ipeis  Invitia,  diyitie  JudiBorum.  —  SpitL  PU,  Fen.,  lib. 
iy.  uzyi.  [Migne],  coll.  867,  368. 

The  letter  was  written  to  Louis,  King  of  France,  and  closes  with  the 
aincere  but  eztrsordinary  words :  *'  Hssi  tibi,  benigne  rez,  scripsi  amore 
Christi,'' etc 


/ 


HIB  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  179 

an  enormous  following.  Thousands)  it  is  said,  from 
Cologne,  Mayence,  Worms,  Strasburg,  assembling  for 
the  second  expedition  to  Palestine,  turned  on  the  Jews 
their  sharpened  swords,  and  slew  them  in  multitudes. 
It  seemed,  almost,  as  if  none  would  be  left  The  arch- 
bishop of  Mayence,  a  humane  man,  could  do  nothing 
effectual  to  check  the  fury  of  the  murderous  paroxysm, 
and  he  turned  for  help  —  as  nearly  everybody  did  who 
felt  under  constraint  to  do  a  work  at  once  noble  and 
dangerous  —  to  the  Abbot  of  Olairvaux.  That  help 
was  not  wanting.  Bernard  wrote  to  the  archbishop  in 
severest  condemnation  of  Rudolph  and  his  course,  char- 
acterizing him  as  a  man  without  heart,  a  man  without 
shame,  whose  insensate  folly  was  conspicuous  to  all, 
who  had  usurped  the  function  of  preaching,  despised 
authority,  given  license  to  murder.  ^^The  Church  tri- 
umphs more  abundantly  over  the  Jews,"  he  adds,  ^^in 
every  day  convincing  and  converting  them,  than  if  it 
were  to  give  them  all  on  the  instant  to  be  consumed  by 
the  sword.  Wherefore  that  universal  prayer  for  the 
unbelieving  Jews,  offered  incessantly  in  the  Church 
from  the  rising  of  the  sun  to  the  going  down  of  the 
same,  that  God  would  take  away  the  veil  from  their 
hearts,  and  lead  them  out  of  darkness  into  the  glorious 
light  of  the  truth  ?  Unless  the  Church  hopes  that  they, 
though  now  unbelieving,  may  come  to  true  faith,  how 
saperfluous  and  vain  to  offer  such  prayer  for  them!'* 
The  doctrine  of  Rudolph  was  not  his  own  doctrine,  but 
that  of  his  Father,  the  Devil,  who  had  sent  him*  It 
was  enough  for  this  monk  to  be  like  his  Master,  a  mur- 
derer and  a  liar,  and  the  father  of  lies.  ^^Oh,  mon- 
strous doctrine !  '*  he  adds.  "  Oh,  what  infernal  counsel ! 
contrary  to  prophets,  hostile  to  apostles,  practically 
subversive  of  all  piety  and  grace!  —  a  sacrilegious  har^ 


180  BEBNIRD  OF  CLAmVAUZ: 

lot  of  a  doctrine,  impregnated  with  the  very  spirit  of 
falsehood,  conceiving  anguijsh,  and  bringing  forth  in- 
iquity!"^ Bernard  wrote  with  a  rush  of  indignant 
severity,  because  the  matter  lay  near  his  heart;  for  he 
had  written  already  that  the  Jews  were  not  to  be  per- 
secuted, nor  slain,  nor  exiled.  "They  are  scattered 
among  all  nations,"  he  said,  "for  this  purpose,  that 
while  they  make  just  expiation  of  their  sin  they  may  be 
the  witnesses  of  our  redemption. "  He  had  stigmatized 
Christian  usurers  as  worse  than  the  Jewish,  if  indeed 
they  were  to  be  called  Christians  at  all,  and  not  rather 
baptized  Jews ;  and  he  had  insisted  that  it  was  the  part 
of  Christian  piety,  while  conquering 'the  proud  to  spare 
the  humble,  especially  th<^e  to  whom  the  law  had  been 
given,  and  the  promises,  whose  were  the  Fathers,  and 
from  whom  according  to  the  flesh  Christ  came,  who  is 
Blessed  forever.^ 

Stern  and  vehement,  however,  as  was  his  remon- 
strance, it  did  not  avail  with  the  truculent  Rudolph,  or 
with  the  ignorant  and  frantic  populations.  He  there- 
fore went  himself  to  Mayence,  met  Rudolph,  and  broke 
his  spirit  almost  as  suddenly  and  quite  as  completely  as 
he  had  broken  that  of  William  of  Aquitaine.  He  met 
the  enraged  and  murderous  mob,  only  more  exasper- 
ated because  Rudolph  had  now  failed  to  lead  it^  and 
scattered  that,  as  a  thousand  lances  could  not  have 
done  it;  and  he  saved  the  Jews,  as  they  themselves 
gratefully  recognized,  from  prolonged  and  general  mas- 
sacre.'    Indeed  his  example,   and  the  energy  of  his 

1  Opera,  vol.  prim.,  epist  ccclzr.,  coll.  666-667. 

<  Opera,  yol.  prim.,  epist.  ccclziii.,  coll.  663-664. 

*  See  the  contemporaneous  Hebrew  testimony,  quoted  lately  by  Ratis- 
IwDne,  **  Hist  de  St.  Bernard,"  torn.  ii.  pp.  176-179.  A  few  sentences 
from  a  Hebrew  document  written  at  the  time,  and  afterwaid  translated  into 
French,  sufficiently  illustrate  the  grateful  homage  of  the  Jews  to  Bernaid : 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  181 

words,  distinctly  affected  the  attitude  toward  the  Jews 
of  the  Church  authorities  from  that  time  on,  and  were 
always  a  defence  for  the  persecuted  people. 

Toward  even  those  of  heretical  sects,  who  had  de* 
parted  from  the  Church,  and  who  were  teaching  doc* 
trines  which  t^  him  appeared  shameful  and  baneful, 
his  spirit  was  compassionate.  Their  summary  execu- 
tion grievously  displeased  him.  ^  They  are  to  be  over- 
come, ''  he  said,  '^  not  with  weapons,  but  with  arguments ; 
to  be  led  back  to  the  faith  by  instruction  and  persua- 
sion. "  Only  Fhen  such  means  had  failed  of  success 
might  the  governing  powers  resort  to  force,  to  prevent 
the  destroying  mischief  from  spreading.^ 

In  his  personal  meditations  he  tended  habitually  to 
contemplate  the  sufferings  of  Christ  and  His  persuasive 
and  tender  invitations,  rather  than  His  lordship  and 
glory.     I  do  not  meaii,  of  course,  to  imply  that  such 


$» 


Ainn  parlait  oet  bomme  sage  ;  et  n  Toiz  ^tait  redoatable  :  ear  il  ^tait 
aim4  ei  reapeeti  de  tons.  lis  I'^ooat^rent  done  ;  et  1e  fea  de  lear  eolhn  ae 
reftoidit :  et  ils  D'accompHrent  paa  toot  le  mal  qn'ils  youlaient  nous  fiure. 
Le  prStre  Bernard  n'avait  re9a  cependant  ni  aigent  ni  ran9on  de  la  part 
des  Jnifa ;  c'etait  son  oceor  qui  le  portait  k  les  aimer  et  qui  lui  snggirait 
de  iMmiies  paroles  pour  Israel  Je  te  b^nis,  6  Adonai,  mon  Dien ;  car 
nooa  mTiona  allam^  ton  oourronx,  et  tn  noua  as  pardonn^  et  console  en 
■nsdtant  ee  jnste,  sans  leqnel  nul  d*entre  nons  n'anrait  conserr^  sa  Tie** 
(p.  179). 

^  Gapiantnr,  dic(^  non  armis,  sed  aif^mentiB,  qnibus  refoUantar  errores 
eomni :  ipai  yero,  si  fieri  potest,  reeoncilientnr  Catbolicie,  rerocentur  ad 
Tenun  fidem.  Httc  est  entm  yolnntas  ejna  qui  ynlt  omnes  homines  salyoe 
fieri,  et  ad  agnitionem  yeritatis  yenire. .  . .  Itaqne  homo  de  Ecclesia  ez- 
erdtatnset  doctns,  si  cum  hnretico  hominedispntareaggreditnr,  iUo  inten- 
tionem  snam  dirigere  debet,  quatenus  ita  errantem  conyincat,  ut  et  con- 
yertat  Quod  si  reyerti  nolnerit,  nee  conyictus  post  primam  jam  et  secnn* 
dam  admonitionem,  ntpote  qni  omnino  snbyersns  est:  erit  secundum 
Apoatolum  deyitandns.  Ex  hoe  jam  melius  (nt  quidem  ego  arbitror) 
eflbgatnr,  aut  etiam  religatur,  quam  sinitnr  yineas  demoUri.  -—  Opera^  voL 
yiim.,  Ser.  in  Cant.,  Iziy.,  col.  8052. 


182  BERNARD  OF  CLAlRVkUX  I 

contemplation  wag  peculiar  to  him  among  the  men  of 
his  time,  or  that  it  has  ever  been  unfamiliar  in  Chris- 
tian experience.  But  the  strong  scholastic  tendency 
which  in  that  age  was  rapidly  rising  and  spreading, 
and  which  largely  dominated  the  following  centuries, 
was  naturally  occupied  with  abstruse  questions,  more 
fascinating  sometimes  in  proportion  to  their  remote- 
ness from  practical  concerns;  and  it  lacked  almost 
wholly  the  fine  inspiration  to  affectionate  deroutness, 
and  to  an  heroic  consecration  of  spirit,  which  came  from 
contemplating  the  life  of  the  Lord,  especially  His  un- 
searchable sufferings.  On  the  other  hand  it  was  con- 
sonant with  the  temper  of  the  time  that  the  earnest  men 
who  were  zealously  endeavoring  to  stay  the  fierce  cur- 
rents of  iniquity,  and  to  curb  and  govern  the  riotous 
passions  of  ambition  and  lust  which  had  the  impulse  of 
centuries  behind  them,  should  dwell  most  largely  on 
the  kingship  of  Christ,  and  on  His  office  as  Judge  of  the 
world,  not  omitting  but  subordinating  that  which  to  hu- 
man eyes  represented  His  weakness;  while  on  all  sides, 
within  the  Church,  and  sometimes  in  its  highest  posi- 
tions, were  men  as  utterly  infidel  to  the  Gospel  as  any 
succeeding  age  has  shown ;  who  jested  at  the  mysteries 
which  they  claimed  to  celebrate,  and  who  thought,  if 
they  did  not  say,  with  the  accomplished  emperor  Fred- 
eric Second,  a  hundred  years  later,  when  the  host  was 
being  carried  on  the  street  amid  prostrate  woi^shippers, 
"How  long  shall  this  imposture  continue  ?  "  * 

^  Matthew  Paris  abrinka  from  repeating  the  words  attributed  by  com* 
mon  fame  to  the  Emperor,  but  be  refers  to  tbem  in  these  terms  :  — 

Imponebatnr  enim  ei,  quod  raeillans  in  fide  catboUca  dixerit  verba  ex 
qnibus  elici  potait  non  tantum  fidci  imbecillitas,  quin  immo  beresis  et 
Uasphemia  enormitas  execranda,  .  .  .  et  de  eucharistia  qnasdam  delira- 
menta  protuliaae.  —  Cfhroniea  MajorOy  vol.  ill.  p.  620  [an.  1238].    London 


HIS  PEB80NAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  188 

Bernard  was  a  man  keenly  sensitive  to  all  subtle  and 
powerful  influences  in  the  social  atmosphere,  but  he 
remained  unconquered  and  almost  untouched  by  those 
which  thus  assailed  him,  because  his  soul  was  vitally 
and  constantly  centred  in  Christ,  and  centred  in  Him  as 
a  suffering  yet  a  glorified  Redeemer.  A  man  of  quick 
and  discursive  intelligence,  assiduously  engaged  in 
practical  work,  he  saw  the  Lord  in  all  His  offices,  and 
did  not  hesitate,  as  we  have  seen,  to  invoke  the  utmost 
terrors  of  His  judgment  against  the  stubborn  resisting 
will  of  baron  or  prince.  But  there  is  something  beau- 
tiful and  significant  in  the  reverent  regard  with  which 
his  mind  turned  spontaneously  to  the  sufferings  of 
Christ  In  the  fields,  under  the  beloved  shade  of  his 
oaks,  in  the  arbor  where  he  meditated  his  sermons,  or 
in  his  cell,  he  tells  us  himself  that  these  were  the  fa* 
▼orite  subject  of  his  thought.  Preaching  upon  Canti- 
cles i.  13,  ^  A  bundle  of  myrrh  is  my  Beloved  to  me, " 
he  says,  ^^  And  I,  Brethren,  from  the  outset  of  my  con- 
version, in  place  of  that  abundance  of  deserts  in  which 
I  knew  myself  to  be  wanting,  have  been  careful  to  col- 
lect this  bundle  of  myrrh,  and  to  lay  it  upon  my  breast, 
gathered  from  all  the  anxieties  and  the  bitternesses 
Buffered  by  my  Lord ;  as  first,  of  the  needs  of  his  infant 
years;  then  of  the  labors  which  he  performed  in  preach- 
ing, his  fatigues  in  journeying,  his  vigils  of  prayer,  his 
temptations  in  fasting,  his  tears  of  sympathy,  the 
snares  laid  for  him  in  his  speech,*  finally,  of  his  perils 
among  false  brethren,  of  the  revilings,  spittings, 
blows,  derisions,  the  insults  and  nails,  and  like  bitter 
things,  endured  for  the  salvation  of  our  race,  which  the 
Grospel-grove  as  you  know  abundantly  presents.  .  .  . 
Such  meditations  uplift  my  spirit  in  adverse  times; 
they  moderate  it  when  things  are  prosperous ;  and  they 


184  BEBNABD  OF  CLlfRyAUZ  : 

offer  safe  leadership  to  one  trying  to  walk  in  the  Eing^s 
highway,  between  the  sorrows  and  joys  of  the  present 
life  on  either  hand.  .  .  .  Therefore  these  things  are 
often  on  my  lips,  as  you  know ;  they  are  always  in  my 
heart,  as  Ood  knows ;  they  are  ever  familiar  to  my  pen, 
as  is  evident  to  all ;  and  this  is  constantly  my  highest 
philosophy,  to  know  Jesus  Christ,  and  Him  crucified. "  ^ 

So,  in  another  discourse,  upon  the  Passion  of  Christ, 
he  says :  ^  See  now  the  works  of  the  Lord,  what  wonders 
he  hath  accomplished  on  the  earth!  He  was  beaten 
with  rods,  crowned  with  thorns,  bruised  with  stonea, 
fastened  to  a  cross,  filled  full  with  reproaches ;  yet  un- 
mindful of  all  griefs  he  says,  ^Father,  forgive  them!* 
Hence  [we  understand]  the  many  sufferings  of  hia 
body,  hence  the  pities  of  his  heart ;  hence  the  anguish, 
hence  the  compassion ;  hence  the  oil  of  gladness,  hence 
the  gouts  of  blood  running  down  to  the  ground.  .  .  . 
O,  how  great  is  the  multitude  of  Thy  mercies,  0  Lord ! 
How  far  removed  from  our  thoughts  are  Thy  thoughts ! 
How  enduring  is  Thy  pity,  even  toward  the  impious! 
A  marvellous  thing,  indeed !  He  cries,  ^  Foi^ve  them ! ' 
while  the  Jews  cry,  *  Crucify  Him!'  His  words  are 
softer  than  oil,  while  theirs  are  spears.  .  .  .  Oh,  Jews ! 
ye  are  stones ;  but  ye  strike  a  softer  stone,  from  which 
rings  out  the  response  of  pity,  while  the  oil  of  charity 
gushes  from  it!  How  wilt  thou,  O  Lord,  make  those 
who  delight  in  Thee  to  drink  of  the  abundant  river  of 
Thy  pleasures,  since  Thou  thus  pourest  the  oil  of  Thy 
mercy  even  upon  those  who  crucify  Thee ! "  * 

There  was  nothing  morbid,  and  nothing  debilitating 
to  the  spirit  of  Bernard,  in  this  frequent  meditation  on 
the  sufferings  of  the  Lord.     On  the  other  hand,  it  was 

1  Open,  vol.  prim.,  Ser.  in  Cant.,  zliii.,  colL  2932-2984. 
'  Open,  ToL  prim.,  Ser.  de  Pats.  Dom.,  oolL  1942-44. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHAEACTEEI8TIG8.  185 

simply  exalting  and  quickening  to  whatever  in  him  was 
most  heroic.  His  thought  of  the  Cross  illuminated 
the  Grospel,  and  glorified  the  Church;  and  it  carried 
him  on,  with  unfailing  inspiration,  to  and  through  all 
magnificent  enterprise.  Because  the  Lord  had  been 
divinely  compassionate,  he  sought  and  strove  to  repro- 
duce in  himself  this  heavenly  temper.  Because  the 
King  of  grace  and  glory  had  dared  and  suffered  all 
things  for  him,  he  feared  no  peril,  and  shrank  from  no 
pain,  in  His  supreme  service.  In  general,  it  may  cer- 
tainly be  said  of  his  character  that  it  was  marked, 
quite  beyond  parallel  in  his  time,  by  the  combination 
in  it  of  the  affectionate  and  meditative  habit,  which  if 
left  to  itself  might  have  made  him  an  absorbed  mus- 
ing mystic,  with  the  intensely  practical  spirit,  which  if 
left  to  itself  would  have  made  his  life  effective,  no 
doubt,  but  mechanical,  diplomatic.  The  union  of  the 
two  gave  him  his  pre-eminence ;  and  they  were  as  subtly 
interfused  in  his  soul  as  are  heat  and  light  in  the  solar 
beam. 

Ecstatic  contemplation  was  the  employment  of  many 
of  his  hours ;  when  he  seemed  neither  to  see  nor  hear, 
nor  to  have  the  use  of  any  sense ;  when  man  was  for- 
gotten, and  the  forms  of  nature  failed  to  attract  him ; 
as  when  he  rode  an  entire  day  along  the  shore  of  the 
Lake  of  Geneva,  through  the  loveliest  and  grandest 
sceneries  of  Europe,  and  did  not  know  until  evening 
that  the  lake  had  been  near  him.^  In  such  hours  he 
meditated  on  the  love  of  Grod,  of  which  he  wrote  to  some 
of  his  friends  in  words  which  show  his  experience  of  it 

1  Juxta  lacam  etUm  Laosaneiiseni  totius  die!  itinere  pei^gens,  penitns 
earn  non  Tidit,  aut  ae  yiOen  non  ridit.  Cum  enim  yespere  facto  de  eodem 
lacQ  flocii  coUoqnerentnr,  interrogabat  eos,  nbi  ille  lacas  eaaet ;  et  mirati 
•Qnt  o&iyeni.  —  Opera^  yoL  sec.,  Vita,  i.  lib.  ii.  cap.  2,  ool.  2192. 


186  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIRyAUZ  : 

^At  first,''  he  says,  ^man  loves  himself  for  his  own 
sake.  When  he  sees  that  he  cannot  subsist  by  himself, 
he  begins  by  faith  to  seek  after  and  to  love  God,  as  need- 
ful to  him.  So  he  loves  God  on  a  secondary  level ,  for 
his  own  sake,  not  for  Gk)d's.  But  when  he  has  thus 
begun,  by  reason  of  his  own  need,  to  care  for  God,  and 
to  resort  to  Him  in  thought,  in  study,  in  prayer,  and 
in  obedience,  even  through  an  acquaintance  of  this  sort 
little  by  little  God  gradually  becomes  known  to  him, 
and  is  properly  lovely  to  his  thought;  and  so,  having 
found  by  tasting  how  sweet  the  Lord  is,  man  passes  to 
the  third  stage,  in  which  he  loves  God  for  God's  sake, 
not  his  own.  Upon  this  level  he  abides ;  and  I  know  not 
whether  by  any  man  the  fourth  stage  in  this  life  hath 
been  perfectly  reached,  in  which  he  shall  love  himself 
only  for  God's  sake.  If  any  assert  that  they  have  ex- 
perienced this,  I  can  only  confess  that  for  me  it  seems 
impossible.  But  beyond  doubt  this  will  come  when  the 
good  and  faithful  servant  of  the  Lord  shall  enter  fully 
into  His  joy,  and  be  transported  at  the  riches  of  God's 
house.  As  if  inebriate  with  gladness,  he  shall  then  in 
a  wonderful  way  be  forgetful  of  himself,  and  departing 
spiritually  out  of  himself  he  shall  wholly  ascend  to 
God,  and  be  thenceforth  united  with  Him  as  one 
spirit  "1 

Tn  these  ecstatic  meditations  came  to  Bernard  that 
rejoicing  sense,  that  almost  vision,  of  the  Church  on 
High  which  very  often  appeared  in  his  discourse.  "  The 
land  which  the  soul  of  the  saint  inhabits,"  he  says  in 
one  of  his  sermons,  ^'  is  not  a  land  of  f orgetfulness,  nor 
a  land  of  labor  with  which  one  must  be  occupied.  Tn  a 
word,  it  is  not  earth,  but  heaven.  And  will  habitation 
in  celestial  regions  harden  the  spirits  of  those  whom 

^  Opera,  yol.  prim.,  epUt.  zL  coL  168, 


HIS  PEB80NAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  187 

thej  receive,  or  deprive  them  of  memory,  or  dcBpoil 
them  of  affection  ?  Brethren,  the  amplitude  of  heaven 
doth  not  contract  the  heart,  but  dilates  it;  it  exhilar- 
ates the  mind,  does  not  deprive  it  of  reason ;  it  expands 
the  affections,  and  does  not  restrict  them.  In  the  light 
of  Gk)d,  the  memory  becomes  serenely  clear,  it  is  not 
obscured ;  in  the  light  of  God,  one  learns  what  he  did 
not  know,  he  does  not  unlearn  what  here  he  knew. 
Even  those  superior  spirits  who  have  dwelt  in  heaven 
from  the  beginning,  do  they  because  inhabiting  heaven 
look  with  disdain  upon  the  earth  ?  do  they  not  rather 
visit  and  frequent  it  ?  Does  affection  fail  in  their  min- 
istry because  they  see  always  the  face  of  the  Father  ? 
Rather,  are  they  not  all  ministering  spirits,  sent  forth 
to  minister  to  those  who  have  the  heirship  of  salva- 
tion? What  then  ?  Shall  angels  go  abroad  and  succor 
men,  and  those  who  are  of  ourselves  be  ignorant  of  us, 
or  not  know  how  to  sympathize  with  us  in  the  things 
which  they  themselves  have  suffered  ?  They  who  have 
come  out  of  great  tribulation,  shall  they  not  recognize 
those  who  still  continue  in  it  ? "  ^ 

Undoubtedly,  in  such  fond  and  frequent  contempla- 
tion of  those  who  had  passed  from  the  darkness  of  earth 
to  be  enthroned  in  the  light  of  heaven  lay  a  certain 
peril,  afterward  sadly  developed  as  we  think,  in  minds 
less  closely  affiliated  with  Christ  than  was  Bernard's ; 
the  peril  of  seeking  the  aid,  and  the  intercessory  prayer, 
of  those  who  had  entered  within  the  veil.  To  Bernard 
himself  this  seemed  a  fit  and  natural  impulse :  though 
Christ  was  always  supreme  in  his  thought  as  the  hearer 
of  prayer,  and  he  chiefly  presented  the  blessed  dead  as 
inspiring  effort  to  imitate  their  virtues,  not  as  offering 

1  Opens  voL  prim.,  S«r,  iL  de  S.  Victor,  coll.  2082-8083. 


188  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

mediation  before  God.^  Thus,  in  the  sermon  immedi- 
ately preceding  the  one  just  referred  to,  he  says '  ^  Let 
us  study  to  be  conformed  to  his  manners,  whose  won- 
derful experiences  we  could  not  rival  if  we  would !  Let 
us  emulate  the  sobriety  of  life  in  this  man ;  his  devout 
affection ;  his  gentleness  of  spirit,  his  chastity  of  body, 
his  guardianship  of  his  lips,  his  purity  of  mind;  put- 
ting reins  on  our  anger,  and  moderation  on  our  speech ; 
sleeping  less,  praying  oftener,  communing  with  one 
another  in  psalms  and  hymns  and  spiritual  songs ;  join- 
ing the  nights  to  the  days,  and  occupying  both  with 
Divine  worship.  Let  us  emulate  him  in  the  best  gifts; 
learning  from  him  what  it  is  to  be  of  a  meek  and  lowly 
spirit;  striving  to  be  as  he  was,  generous  to  the  poor, 
delightful  to  his  friends,  patient  toward  sinners,  be- 
nignant toward  all.  In  these  things  we  shall  be  im- 
pressed with  the  beauty  of  him  by  the  glory  of  whose 
miracles  we  are  simply  humbled.  The  miracles  may 
gladden  us,  but  these  things  will  edify;  the  others  may 
excite  us,  but  these  will  nobly  set  us  forward/'*  In 
his  extended  and  manifold  writings  one  finds  few  ref- 
erences to  the  invocation  of  saints ,  however  aided  by 
ample  indexes ;  and  these  few  have  a  singularly  hesi- 
tating tone.  ^^  Who  knows, "  he  says  in  a  sermon  upon 
the  death  of  a  monk,  ^'  but  he  has  been  taken  away  that 
he  may  be  our  protector  by  his  prayers  before  the 

Father?    Would  that  so  it  might  be. "  •    And  again  he 

1  In  the  same  sermon  from  which  I  have  qnoted,  he  says  :  "  Eia  ergo 
fortis  athleta,  dnlcis  patrone,  advocate  fidelia,  ezsurge  in  acyatorium  nobts, 
nt  et  nos  de  nostra  ereptione  gaadeamus,  et  tu  de  plena  yictoria  glorieria. 
.  .  .  O  victor  Jesu,  te  in  nostra  Yicton  landamus,  quia  te  in  illo  vicisae 
cognoscimus.  Da  ei,  piissime  Jesu,  sic  de  sua  in  te  victoria  gloriari,  at 
non  snbeat  oblivio  nostri.**    col.  2084. 

*  Opera,  vol.  prim.,  Ser.  i.  de  St  Victor,  col.  2079. 

*  Opera,  vol.  prim.,  Ser.  de  Obit  Humbert  ool.  2898. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  189 

says  that,  ^^  because  men  are  afraid  of  God,  and  fear  to 
approach  him  worthily  by  themselves,  therefore  they 
desire  others  to  supplicate  for  them."  ^  It  is  quite  evi- 
dent) I  think,  that  the  reliance  on  the  prayers  of  the 
departed,  which  afterward  became  so  prominent  and  so 
enfeebling  a  force  in  the  experience  and  worship  of  the 
Church,  was  comparatively  unfamiliar  to  Bernard,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  his  thought  of  those  who  had  gone 
already  to  the  skies  was  so  constant  and  vivid  that  at 
times  he  seemed  to  see  them. 

The  vision  of  his  mother,  I  have  said  before,  more 
than  once  appeared  to  him.  The  vision  of  Christ,  and 
of  the  Holy  Mother  of  Christ,  he  also  felt  that  he  had 
had,  more  than  once.  Once,  when  a  child,  on  Christmas 
eve,  having  fallen  asleep  in  church  while  waiting  for 
the  service  which  had  been  delayed,  the  Lord  appeared 
to  him  in  his  dream  as  a  new-born  infant^  Once,  when 
grievously  sick,  the  Virgin  seemed  to  come  to  him  per- 
sonally, to  succor  and  heal.^  When  in  great  distress  of 
spirit  at  the  ruin  which  appeared  to  threaten  his  new 
abbey,  while  pouring  out  his  soul  in  prayer,  he  saw 
the  hills  round  about  him  full  of  men,  various  in  dress 
and  in  condition,  descending  toward  the  valley,  till  the 
valley  could  not  contain  them.^  On  his  way  to  the 
council  at  £tampes,  where  the  choice  of  the  French 
Church  was  to  be  made  between  rival  popes,  to  which 
council  he  had  been  specially  summoned  by  king  and 
prelates,  and  to  which  he  was  going,  as  he  said  him- 

1  Ibid.,  Ser.  xzr.  de  Diven.  col.  2384. 

*  Opera,  toI.  sac..  Vita,  i.  lib.  i  cap.  2,  col.  2094. 

*  Ibid.,  cap.  12,  col.  2182. 

*  Sobito  stans  Id  ipBa  oratione,  modice  intereloais  ocalis,  Tidit  nndique 
ex  ricinis  montibus  tantam  divers!  habitus  et  diversa  conditionis  bomi- 
nam  mnltitadinem  in  inferiorem  vallem  descendere,  ut  yallis  ipsa  capers 
Bon  poMet.  —  IM,,  Vita,  L  cap.  6,  col.  2111. 


190  BEBNABD  OF  CLAmYjinx: 

self,  fearful  and  trembling,  he  had  a  vision  in  the  night 
of  an  immense  church  filled  with  those  harmoniously 
uniting  in  the  praises  of  God ;  and  he  took  from  it  the 
bure  expectation  that  the  peace  of  the  Church  was  now 
to  be  secured.^  Almost  at  the  close  of  his  life,  in  pe- 
culiarly critical  and  dangerous  circumstances,  he  had 
another  vision,  of  himself  uniting  with  distant  monks 
in  singing  the  Gloria  in  Excelsis,  which  gave  him  per- 
fect quietness  of  mind  in  the  midst  of  what  to  others 
was  a  scene  of  portentous  fury  and  gloom.  ^ 

His  spirit  at  such  times,  in  the  height  and  intensity 
of  its  absorbed  contemplation,  might  have  seemed  in 
danger  of  passing  the  boundary  between  sanity  and 
delirium ;  of  becoming,  at  least,  essentially  unfitted  for 
practical  affairs.  Yet  no  dull  artisan  working  at  his 
trade,  no  soldier  in  arms,  no  statesman  in  council,  was 
more  punctual  and  exact  in  the  performance  of  daily 
duty  than  was  this  enthusiastic  and  meditative  monk. 
The  zeal  for  usefulness  was  a  passion  with  him.  He 
ruled  his  monastery  with  firmness  and  wisdom^  while 
taking  part  in  its  humblest  labors,  and  preaching  with 
extraordinary  frequency  and  fervor.  He  was  so  practi- 
cal as  to  be  almost  an  iconoclast,  essentially  a  Puritan, 
in  regard  to  Church-art  "  The  beautiful  picture  of  some 
saint  is  exhibited,"  he  said  in  his  letter  to  William 
of  St  Thierry,  "  and  it  is  accounted  holier  in  propor- 
tion to  the  brightness  of  the  colors.  Men  rush  to  kiss 
it;  they  are  inspired  to  gifts;  and  they  admire  the 
beautiful   in  it,    rather    than    reverence    the    sacred. 

^  Sicut  postea  fatebatur,  non  mcdiocriter  pavidas  et  tremebundus  adre- 
nit,  periculum  qnippe  et  pondns  negotii  non  ignorans.  In  itlnere  taznen 
conaolatus  est  eam  Deus,  ostendens  «i  in  visu  noctis  Eccleaiam  magiiam 
oonoorditer  in  Dei  laadibos  concinentem  ;  nnde  sperayit  paoem  sine  dubio 
proyenturam.  ^Opera,  vol.  sec.,  Vita,  L  lib.  ii.,  cap.  1,  coL  2147. 

•  Opeia,  vol.  sec.  Vita,  i.  lib.  v.  cap.  1,  coL  2252. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHABACtfiBISnCS.  191 

There  are  placed  in  the  churches,  not  jeweled  coronals 
but  vast  wheels,  set  around  with  torches,  but  shining 
hardly  less  with  inserted  gems.  For  cai^dlesticks  we 
see,  as  it  were,  great  trees  erected,  of  masses  of  brass, 
wrought  with  wonderful  labor  of  the  artificer,  and  glit- 
tering not  more  with  the  superimposed  lamps  than  with 
their  own  jewels.  What  do  you  imagine  is  sought  by 
these  things  ?  The  contrition  of  the  penitent,  or  the 
wonder  of  beholders  ?  Oh,  vanity  of  vanities !  and  not 
more  vain  than  foolish !  The  Church  glistens  on  all  its 
walls,  but  the  poor  are  n6t  there !  It  clothes  its  stones 
with  gold,  but  leaves  its  children  to  their  nakedness. 
At  the  expense  of  the  needy,  it  feasts  the  eyes  of  the 
rich.  The  curious  find  what  pleases  them,  but  the 
wretched  find  nothing  to  give  them  succor.  Certainly 
we  do  not  show  respect  to  the  images  of  saints  with 
which  the  very  pavement  swarms,  that  is  trodden  under 
foot!  Often  there  is  spitting  into  an  angePs  mouth, 
while  frequently  the  face  of  some  saint  is  being  beaten 
by  the  shoes  of  those  passing  over  it.  Why  at  any  rate 
do  you  decorate  what  is  thus  immediately  to  be  defiled  ? 
Why  paint  with  color  what  so  soon  must  be  bruised  ? . .  . 
And  what  doe9  that  ridiculous  monstrosity  accomplish 
for  the  brothers  reading  in  the  cloister  ?  that  extraordi- 
nary hideous  beauty,  and  handsome  deformity  ?  Why 
are  the  filthy  apes  there  ?  and  the  savage  lions  ?  Why 
the  monstrous  centaurs,  and  the  half-human  figures? 
Ton  may  see  there  one  body  under  many  heads,  or 
again  many  bodies  with  one  head.  On  one  side  is 
shown  the  tail  of  a  serpent  on  a  quadruped;  on  the 
other,  a  quadruped's  head  on  a  fish.  There  is  a  beast 
like  a  horse  in  the  fore-part,  and  a  goat  behind ;  here 
is  a  homed  animal  with  the  hinder  part  of  a  horse. . . . 
For  €h>d*s  sake,  even  if  one  is  not  ashamed  of  such 


192  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

absurdities,  why  is  he  not  distressed  at  the  cost  of 
them!"i 

It  is  quite  apparent  that  the  contemplative  and  vi- 
sionary temper  never  overbore  the  practical  in  the  mind 
of  Bernard.  He  was  ready  for  any  service,  however 
high,  however  humble;  to  preach  crusades,  inspire 
great  assemblies,  counsel  princes,  Wmonish  pontiffs, 
confront  heretics,  or  to  attend  to  the  smallest  matters 
in  regulating  his  monastery ;  and  one  of  his  latest  let- 
ters, written  in  a.d.  1152,  amid  the  wonderful  sunset 
radiance  which  lay  upon  his  closing  life,  was  to  the 
young  Count  of  Champagne  about  some  pigs,  which  had 
been  entrusted  to  Bernard's  care  by  a  neighbor  abbot 
who  had  gone  to  Rome,  and  which  had  been  stolen  by 
vassals  of  the  count  ^^I  would  greatly  have  pre- 
ferred," he  says,  ^'that  they  should  have  stolen  my 
own  pigs;  and  I  require  them  at  your  hand*"'  He 
who  lived  as  near  to  Gk)d  as  did  any  man  of  his  time, 
or  perhaps  of  any  Christian  century,  and  around  whom 
at  times  the  opening  heavens  seemed  alive  with  forms 
and  vivid  with  supernal  lustres,  was  as  cool  and  clear- 
headed, as  patient  and  persistent  in  every  form  of  what 
appeared  to  him  useful  activity,  as  any  man  who  lived  in 
France.  Canon  Kingsley  has  spoken  of  him  as  having 
a  ^^ hysterical  element"  in  his  character.'  I  may  not 
know  precisely  what  was  intended  by  the  adjective,  but  it 
usually  represents  something  fitful,  paroxysmal,  essen- 
tially convulsive  in  the  habit  and  temper;  and  if  that 
were  the  Canon's  meaning  I  should  say  there  was  about 
as  much  of  it  in  Bernard  as  in  John  Calvin  or  Julius 
CaBsar. 

^  Opera,  toI.  prim.,  colL  1248-1244. 

*  MalaiMem,  dico  vobis,  ut  nostros  proprios  rapaitaent.     A  vobb  n* 
qairimos  illos.  — Ibid.,  vol.  prim.,  epist.  oclxxix.  coL  568. 

*  The  Roman  and  the  Tenton,  p.  241.     London  ed.     1871 


ma  PEBSONAL  CHABACTEBISTIGB.  198 

He  wag  really  a  wretched  invalid  during  all  his  pub- 
lic life,  not  having  health  enough  in  a  year  to  suffice  an 
ordinary  man  for  a  week.  Such  had  been  his  early 
austerities,  that  he  had  almost  wholly  lost  the  power  of 
distinguishing  flavors ;  drinking  oil  when  it  stood  near 
him,  in  place  of  water  or  wine,  without  knowing  the 
difference;  requiiling  a  sort  of  pious  fraud  on  the  part 
of  those  ministering  to  him  to  make  him  take  what  was 
suitable.  His  usual  food  was  a  bit  of  bread,  moist- 
ened with  warm  water,  with  very  little  to  drink.  ^  The 
very  thought  of  food  was  commonly  repulsive  to  him, 
and  what  he  took  seemed  only  to  serve  to  postpone 
death,  not  effectively  to  nourish  life.  At  one  time  he 
had  to  be  wholly  retired  from  the  monastery  for  a  year, 
and  constrained,  almost  by  violence  on  the  part  of  his 
friends,  to  live  by  himself,  in  a  rude  hut,  under  the 
charge  of  a  rustic  empiric  whom  Bernard  regarded  as 
an  irrational  beast,^  but  who  really  seems  to  have  done 
him  some  good.  He  did  not  then  recognize  any  differ* 
ence  in  taste  between  butter  and  raw  blood,  and  rel- 
ished nothing  except  the  water  which  cooled  his  throat 
Yet  William  of  St.  Thierry,  who  visited  him  there, 
says  that  he  found  him  in  this  mean  hut,  such  as  were 
built  for  leprous  persons  along  highways,  exulting  as 
in  the  joys  of  Paradise ;  that  he  himself  entered  it  with 
such  reverence  as  if  he  were  approaching  an  altar  of 
God;  that  such  was  the  atmosphere  of  sweetness  per- 
vading the  place  that  if  he  could  have  had  his  choice  he 
would  have  desired  nothing  so  much  as  to  remain  always 
with  the  invalid,  and  serve  him.  ^^  Thus  I  found  the 
man  of  Ck)d,"  he  says,  ^and  thus  he  was  dwelling  in 

*  OpeTA,  Tol.  MC.,  Vita,  L  lib.  iii  cap.  1,  ool.  2190. 

*  Juato  Dei  Jndicio  inmtionali  cmdam  bestin  datua  aum  ad  obediendnm. 
— iKd,  Vita,  i.  Hb.  i  cap.  8,  ooL  8117. 

,13 


194  BERNARD  OP  CLAIRVAUX  : 

his  own  aolitttde.  Yet  he  wag  not  alone,  since  God  was 
with  him,  and  the  guardianship  and  comfort  of  holy 
angels. "  William  found  no  diflScultj  in  believing  that 
alternate  choirs  of  heavenly  voices  were  there  to  be 
heard;  for  in  the  light  which  proceeded  from  the  hut 
he  seemed  to  himself  to  see  new  heavens  and  a  new 
earth,  the  (Golden  Age  returning  at  Glairvaux.  ^ 

Bernard  had  so  impressed  the  monastery  with  his 
spirit,  that  it  went  on  in  his  absence  as  if  he  nad  been 
present;  and  throughout  life,  amid  whatever  physical 
weakness  or  spiritual  raptures,  he  not  only  worked 
himself,  with  an  incessant  energy  of  will  which  lifted 
his  frail  and  sickly  body  into  abnormal  vigor,  but  he 
made  all  around  him  work,  as  well,  for  what  to  him 
were  the  high  aims  of  life.  His  regard  was  equally 
ready  and  equally  careful  for  the  distant  and  the  near. 
He  planned  and  wrought  as  if  everjrthing  depended  on 
immediate  accomplishment  And  if,  as  his  disciples 
believed,  the  Holy  Virgin  had  appeared  to  him,  attended 
by  saints,  in  his  sore  sickness,  and  with  gentle  touch 
had  relieved  his  distress,  removed  his  disease,  and 
checked  the  fierce  flow  of  saliva  from  his  lips,'  it  was 
that  those  lips  might  freely  speak  the  wisest  and  most 
commanding  words  then  heard  in  Europe. 

1  Opeim,  Tol.  aec,  Yite,  i  lib.  L  oip.  7.  ooU.  ail5-21ia 
*  Yite,  L  lib.  i.  cap.  IS,  ooL  2182.  A  more  extreme  form  which  the 
legend  sabseqaently  took  has  been  iromortalized  by  Miirillo  in  e  celebrated 
pictaie  in  the  Royal  GaUery  at  Madrid,  where  the  Yiigin  Mother  is  repr»- 
sented  as  appearing  to  Bernard  while  seated  among  his  books,  and  ^^"""f 
milk  from  her  breast  to  drop  upon  his  lips,  not  only  to  heal  them  bat  to 
endow  them  with  oelestisl  eloquence,  while  chemhs  sarronnd  her  in  sn 
eShlgence  of  heavenly  glory. 

It  is  said  that  the  same  legend  is  represented  on  tiie  glass  in  one  of  the 
windows  of  TJchfield  Cathedral.  If  this  be  so,  tbe  glass  is  ondonbtedly 
part  of  that  brouglit  to  England  in  the  early  part  of  this  centniy  from  the 
abbey  chnrch  of  the  rappresaed  Cistercian  nunnery  at  Henkeiuode,  near 
U%a.    See  **  Handbook  to  Cathedrals,**  London,  1874,  p.  S2S. 


HIS  PEBSONAL  CHABACTEBISTICB.  195 

There  was  only  one  thing  which  he  would  not  do :  he 
would  not  accept  ecclesiastical  office,  with  its  titles  and 
emoluments ;  and  I  have  spoken  to  small  purpose  if  it 
has  not  already  become  evident  t^o  you  that  it  was  as  natu- 
ral to  him  to  be  regardless  of  these  things,  as  it  was  to 
be  careless  of  discomfort  or  danger.  His  refusal  of 
Church-distinctions  seemed  astonishing  at  the  time; 
but  he  fronted  Europe  while  he  lived,  as  he  has  fronted 
it  since  on  the  canvasses  which  present  his  traditionary 
portrait^  with  mitres  lying  unregarded  on  his  book  or 
at  his  feet  Langres,  Ohdlons*sur-Mame,  as  well  as 
Oenoa  and  Pisa,  desired  him  for  bishop.  Milan  vehe- 
mently claimed  him  as  the  only  fit  successor  to  the 
illustrious  Ambrose  in  its  majestic  archbishopric. 
Kheims,  the  noblest  city  in  France,  capital  of  a  great 
province,  was  equally  eager  to  place  him  on  its  famous 
and  powerful  archi-episcopal  throne.^  But  nothing 
could  move  him.  He  would  live  and  die  the  Abbot  of 
Clairvauz.  His  influence  was  not  limited,  however, 
perhaps  indeed  it  was  extended  and  heightened,  by  this 
disdain  of  official  distinction.  The  secret  of  that  in- 
fluence is  what  I  have  been  trying  to  present,  in  the 
man  himself,  and  his  almost  unique  personality. 

A  lover  of  nature  and  of  man,  tender-hearted  and 
intense,  a  friend  of  the  poor,  and  a  patient  adviser  of 
the  humblest  of  monks,  while  as  fearless  before  power 
as  the  lightning  is  before  the  trees  which  it  shivers, 
enthusiastic  and  compassionate,  ecstatic  in  contempla- 
tion, indefatigable  in  work,  with  a  firm  and  fervent 
faith  in  Qod,  an  adoring  love  for  the  Lord  who  had 
died,  an  apprehension  —  which  seemed  almost  vision  — 
of  the  realms  supernal,  and  with  an  extraordinary  elo- 
quence in  speech,  of  which  I  shall  try  to  speak  here 

'  Opera,  Vita,  i.  lib.  ii.  cap.  4,  col.  2168. 


196  BERNABD  OF  CLAIBVAUX  : 

after, — it  could  not  but  be  that,  whether  by  labor  or  by 
word,  he  should  produce  immense  effects.  Even  the 
unspiritual  character  of  the  age  was  not  wholly  with- 
out advantage  to  him,  since  there  was  something  tran- 
scending its  experience,  surpassing  expectation,  in  his 
peculiar  temper  and  life.  He  could  hardly  have  stood 
in  sharper  contrast,  not  with  fighting  barons  alone,  or 
unscrupulous  kings,  but  with  ambitious  princes  in  the 
Church,  or  with  those  who  had  been  principal  in  the 
preceding  ages.  Even  if  he  were  sometimes  irritable, 
perhaps  wholly  unreasonable,  as  occasionally  he  ap- 
peared even  in  his  relations  with  Peter  the  Venerable,^ 
men  pardoned  much  to  a  man  of  whom  it  was  commonly 
known  that  he  could  not  exercise,  eat,  or  sleep,  and 
seemed  only  kept  alive  by  the  intensity  of  his  spirit ; 
they  were  only  the  more  amazed  at  the  usual  serenity 
and  equanimity  of  his  temper.  The  very  frailness  of 
his  body,  the  beauty  which  grew  more  ethereal  always, 
thus  assisted  his  moral  power.  He  seemed  hardly  more 
than  a  palpable  spirit,  walking  the  earth  on  the  way  to 
heaven ;  and  the  singular  supremacy  over  all  physical 
desire  or  infirmity  which  his  soul  asserted,  appeared  to 
the  common  men  of  the  time  absolutely  preter-human. 

Men  thought  him  almost  as  truly  inspired  as  Isaiah 
had  been,  or  as  Saint  John.  It  was  believed  that  he 
could  predict  events;  as  when  he  had  warned  his 
brother  Gerard  that  a  lance  would  soon  pierce  his  side, 
unless  he  gave  himself  to  the  service  of  religion,  as 
shortly  it  did;^  or  as  when  he  admonished  the  king  of 

^  Compare,  for  example,  his  impetaons  letters  to  the  Pope  and  the 
cardinals,  about  the  monk  of  Clngni  chosen  Bishop  of  Langres  (yol.  prim., 
epist  cMv.-clxix.,  oolL  875-884),  with  the  temperate  and  conciUatoiy 
letter  of  Peter  the  Venerable  to  himself,  on  the  same  subject.  Opera  Pet. 
Yen.,  lib.  i  epist.  xxiz. 

*  Opera,  toL  sec.,  Vita,  i.  lib.  i.  cap.  11,  col.  2100. 


HIS  PEB80NAL  CHARACTEBISTICS.  197 

France  that  his  eldest  son,  full  at  the  time  of  life  and 
promise,  would  die  ere  long,  unless  the  king  turned 
from  certain  courses.  When  the  prince  did  die,  by 
sudden  casualty,  the  words  appeared  plainly  prophetic^ 
Visiting  once  a  town  in  Languedoc  called  Yiride  Fo- 
lium [or  Vert-feuil],  where  was  a  castle  containing  a 
bundred  knights,  well-armed  and  rich,  when  he  was 
wholly  prevented  from  preaching  by  the  furious  clamor 
raised  against  him,  he  said,  as  he  departed  from  the  place, 
^Thou  castle  of  the  green  leaves,  God  shall  dry  thee 
up ! "  The  ruin  of  castle  and  town  which  followed,  by 
misfortune  and  war,  and  the  subsequent  poverty  of  their 
lord  who  fled  to  Toulouse,  seemed  to  give  tremendous 
fulfilment  to  his  words. ^ 

It  was  not  doubted  that  he  could  work  miracles. 
Humble  as  he  was  before  God,  he  thought  himself  that 
such  had  been  wrought  through  him,^  and  was  some- 
times perplexed  and  disturbed  because  of  them.  ^^I 
greatly  marvel,"  he  said  to  his  brethren  after  extraor- 
dinary things  had  occurred  at  Toulouse,  ^^what  these 
miracles  may  mean,  or  why  it  should  be  seen  that  God 
works  them  by  such  an  one  as  I  am!  For  I  do  not 
seem  to  have  read  on  the  sacred  pages  of  any  signs  sur- 

1  Open,  Vita,  L  lib.  iv.  cap.  2,  ool.  2290. 

t  «<  n  partit,  et  reportant  ses  regards  Ters  la  ville,  il  la  mandit,  en  di* 
MDt ;  Vert-fenil,  qae  Dien  te  deea^e  I  U  annon^t  cela  snr  de  maaifea* 
tea  indices,  car  en  ce  temps,  ainsi  que  le  rapporte  an  Tienx  r^t,  il  j  avait 
dans  ce  ch&tean  cent  chcTaliers  k  demenre,  ayant  armes,  banni^res,  et 
eheTanx,  et  s'  entretenant  k  lenrs  propres  firais,  non  anx  frais  d'antroi ; 
leaqnels,  d^  ce  moment,  furent  affaiblis  cbaqae  aun^  par  la  mis^re  comma 
par  les  gens  de  gnerre,  si  bien  qne  la  grfile  fr^aente,  la  st^rilit^,  la  gnerre 
on  la  sWtion  ne  lenr  laiss^rent  pins  an  moment  de  repos.*'  Quoted  by 
Micbelet,  Hist  de  France,  tom.  li.  pp.  469-470,  note. 

*  See, e.  g.,  epist.  cczlii. (adTo1oeano8),yol.  prim.,  coll.  608-510 :  "Veri- 
tate  niminim  per  nos  manifestata,  maxiifestata  aatem  non  solnm  in  sermone^ 
•ad  etiam  in  yirtate,"  etc 


I 


198  BERNARD  OF  CLAIR VAUX: 

passing  these  in  kind.     Of  course,  wonders  have  been 
accomplished  by  holy  and  perfect  men,   and  also  by 
deceivers.     I  am  conscious  neither  of  holiness  nor  of 
deceit     I  know  that  it  is  not  mine  to  equal  the  merits 
of  the  saints,  which  have  been  illustrated  by  miracles. 
I  trust  tjiat  I  do  not  belong  to  the  class  of  those  who 
have  worked  many  wonders  in  the  name  of  God  while 
unrecognized  by  Him."    He  conferred,  privately,  with 
spiritual  men  as  to  what  the  wonders  might  signify, 
and  at  last  he  seemed  to  himself  to  have  found  an  ex- 
planation.    ^^I  know,"  he  said,  ^^that  signs  of  this  kind 
do  not  contemplate  the  holiness  of  the  one,  but  the  sal- 
vation of  the  many ;  that  Grod  does  not  look  so  much  at 
moral  perfection  in  the  man  by  whom  He  works  them, 
as  at  the  opinion  entertained  about  him,  that  He  may 
so  commend  to  men  the  holiness  believed  to  belong  to 
His  instrument.      The  things   are  not  done  for  the 
benefit  of  those  by  whom  they  are  done,  but  for  the 
greater  number  who  see  them  or  know  of  them.     Ood 
does  not  work  such  things  by  any  to  the  end  that  He 
may  prove  them  holier  than  others,  but  that  others  may 
become  more  eager  lovers  and  seekers  of  His  holiness. 
The  signs  imply  nothing  personal  to  myself;  since  I 
know  l^em  to  be  occasioned  by  the  reputation  which 
has  come  to  me,  rather  than  by  my  life;  they  are  not 
to  give  commendation  to  me,  but  admonition  to  others. "  ^ 
The  spirit  in  which  he  thus  spoke  not  unnaturally  seems 
to  his  biographer  quite  as  marvellous  as  any  of  his 
miracles;  to  emulate  his  Divine   affection  and  to  fol- 
low in  his  spiritual  footsteps,  not  less  difficult,  while 
certainly  more  useful,  than  to  try  to   penetrate  the 
mystery  of  his  astonishing  and  unaccountable  works. 
If  any  credit  is  to  be  given  to  human  testimony,  fur* 

1  Vol  8ec«  Vita,  i.  Ub.  iiL  cap.  7,  coL  JK204. 


HIS  PERSONAL  CHARAGTEBISTICS.  199 

nished  by  those  who  claimed  to  have  been  eye-witnesses 
of  the  facts,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  a  most  extraor- 
dinary force  operated  through  him  on  those  who  sought 
his  ever-ready  assistance.  Much,  no  doubt,  may  be 
fairly  attributed  to  his  unique  and  impressive  person- 
ality, and  to  the  inmiense  effect  which  it  produced  on 
those  who  received  him  as  a  messenger  from  God. 
Much  is  also,  no  doubt,  to  be  ascribed  to  the  credu- 
lous, unintelligent,  and  uncritical  character  of  the 
times  around  him,  when  whole  peoples  were  in  a  con- 
dition of  moral  childhood,  especially  sensitive  to  words 
of  high  moral  command.  For  myself,  I  easily  lay  aside 
the  many  miracles  related  of  him  in  monkish  legends 
after  his  death,  with  those  which  particularly  concerned 
the  treatment  of  nervous  diseases,  or  even  of  semi- 
delirious  conditions.  But  when  it  is  asserted  by  con- 
temporaries that  fevers  were  cured,  or  ulcers  removed, 
by  his  presence,  his  word,  his  touch ;  when  it  is  affirmed 
by  Godfrey  his  secretary,  himself  afterward  abbot  of 
Glairvauz,  that  he  had  personally  seen  the  deaf  made 
to  hear,  the  blind  to  see,  and  the  paralyzed  to  walk,^  I 
do  not  know  what  better  to  do  than  to  accept  the  words 
of  Neander  concerning  such  marvels :  that  *'  when  they 
appear  in  connection  with  a  governing  Christian  tem- 
per, actuated  by  the  spirit  of  love,  they  may  perhaps  be 
properly  regarded  as  solitary  workings  of  that  higher 

^  Eridenter  enim  yerbam  hoc  pnedicaTit,  Domino  oo-openuitet  ^t  aer- 
monem  oonfinmuite  sequentibiis  signis.  Bed  quantis,  et  qnam  mnltiplici- 
baa  aignia  ?  Quanta  Tel  numerare,  nadnm  narrare  difficile  (ant  Nam  at 
eodem  tempore  tcribi  coBperant,  sed  ipsa  demmn  scriptorem  nmneroaitaa 
■eribendomm,  et  materia  anperavit  auctorem.  —  Opera,  toL  sec.,  Vita,  i. 
fib.  iii  cap.  4,  col.  2196. 

Et  com  did  soleat  nibU  eaae  fociliua  dicto;  haic  tamen  Dei  famnlo  per 
gnitiam  qoam  acoeperat,  aigna  facere  magis  facile  videbator,  qnam  nobis 
facta  narrare.  —  Ihid,,  Vita,  L  Ub.  ir.  cap.  8,  ooL  2244. 


200  BERNARD  OF  GIAIRVAUX  : 

power  of  life,  which  Christ  introduced  into  human  na- 
ture. "  ^  Certainly,  the  general  mind  of  Europe,  though 
not  altogether  without  dissent,  accepted  them  as  mira- 
cles. Bernard  never  claimed  any  authority  derived 
from  them,  over  men's  faith  or  conduct,  but  others  in- 
stinctively attributed  such  authority  to  him ;  and  it  is 
not  extravagant  to  say  that  if  any  one  had  declared  him 
to  be  the  Lord,  returned  for  a  season  to  the  earth  which 
He  had  left,  multitudes  would  have  accepted  the  word 
with  a  passionate  enthusiasm  which  the  great  abbot 
would  only  have  recognized  as  insane  blasphemy,  but 
which  even  he  could  hardly  have  restrained. 

He  seems  not  to  have  been  elated  by  any  effect  pro- 
duced by  him  upon  either  the  bodies  or  souls  of  men. 
He  always  wrote  and  spoke  of  himself  with  that  beau- 
tiful humility  which  was  recognized  by  his  companions 
as  among  the  chief  and  the  loveliest  of  his  traits,  even  at 
the  time  when,  as  Baronius  says,  he  ^  was  the  ornament 
and  support  of  the  whole  Catholic  Church,  and  pre- 
eminently the  honor,  glory,  and  joy  of  the  Church  in 
France ; "  ^  when  men  familiarly  spoke  of  him  as  more 
the  pope  than  was  the  pontiff,  and  therefore  committed 
to  him  their  affairs ;  ^  when,  as  Milman  has  accurately 
said,  he  was  ^^at  once  the  leading  and  the  governing 
head  of  Christendom. "  ^  As  one  of  his  early  bic^raphers 
said  of  him,  "  The  humility  of  his  heart  surpassed  the 
majesty  of  his  fame."^  When  receiving  the  profuse 
honors  and  adulation  of  princes  or  of  peoples  he  did  not 

1  Hist,  of  Clrarch,  toI.  It.  p.  267. 

*  Eccles.  Annal.,  torn.  ziz.  p.  7S ;  ecL  Luca. 

*  AiQDt  non  tob  esse  Papain,  sed  me  ;  et  undique  ad  me  oonflnimt,  qui 
habent  negotia.  —  Opera,  toL  prim.,  epist.  ccxzxiz.  coL  603  [to  Sngmius] 

«  Hist  of  Ut  Christ,  toI.  ir.  p.  165.    New  York  ed.  1861. 

*  Vita,  ii.  cap.  17,  coL  2440 :  YinoelMt  tunen  snbUmitatem  nomiius 
homilitas  coxdis. 


HIS  PEB80NAL  CHARACTEBIBTIGB.  SOI 

0eem  to  himself  to  be  Bernard,  but  some  one  else  sub- 
stitated  for  him,  only  recognizing  himself  in  his  proper 
personality  when  he  resumed  familiar  talk  with  the 
humbler  of  his  brethren.^  To  the  end  of  his  life,  his 
sense  of  the  want  of  all  merit  in  himself  was  as  keen 
and  deep  as  when  in  his  youth  he  had  sought  the  Lord. 
One  of  ^e  last  letters,  if  not  the  very  last,  dictated  by 
him,  —  when  sleep  had  wholly  f  orsi^en  him,  when  he 
could  take  no  nourishment,  when  his  feet  and  limbs 
were  painfully  swollen,  but  while  his  mind  continued 
alert  as  ever, —  was  to  his  friend  the  Abbot  of  Bonneval, 
and  contained  the  touching  words :  ^  Pray  to  the  Sav- 
iour, who  wills  not  the  death  of  any  sinner,  that  He 
will  not  delay  my  now  seasonable  departure  from  the 
earth,  but  that  He  will  protect  it.  Be  solicitous  to 
defend  by  your  prayers  one  at  the  extremity  of  life,  who 
is  destitute  of  all  merits ;  that  he  who  plots  insidiously 
against  us  may  not  find  where  he  may  inflict  any  wound. 
In  my  present  condition  I  have  dictated  these  words, 
that  you  may  know  my  heart "  ' 

But  while  thus  recognizing  no  desert  in  himself  he 
was  ready,  even  anxious,  to  depart  and  be  with  Christ 
When  the  prayers  of  the  monks  on  his  behalf  had  pro- 
duced as  it  seemed  a  partial  recovery,  he  said :  ^  Why 
do  you  detain  a  miserable  man  ?  You  are  the  stronger, 
and  prevail  against  me.     Spare  me !    Spare  me !  I  be- 

i  Sonimiu  rapiital)atar  ab  omnibiis,  infimiiin  ipse  se  repatanB :  et  qnem 
iiU  omneB,  ipee  le  nemini  pneferebat.  Deniqne,  sicat  nobis  oBpins  fete- 
batnr,  inter  ranunoB  qnosqne  bonores  et  fkvores  popolonim,  vel  rablimiam 
penonmim,  alteram  nbi  mntaatna  bominem  Tidebatnr,  aeqne  potiiu  reputa- 
bat  abia&tem,  yelnt  qnoddam  ■omninm  snspicatiia.  Ubi  yero  aimpliciores 
ci  fiatres,  nt  andet,  fidncialinB  loqnerentnr,  et  arnica  semper  lioaret  bn- 
militate  frni;  ibt  se  iDTenisse  gaadebat,  et  in  propriam  radiine  personam. 
»  Opera,  rol  sec..  Vita,  i  lib.  iiL  cap.  7,  col.  2206. 

*  Ibid.,  voL  prim.,  epist  cccx.  coU.  504-505. 


202  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUZ  : 

seech  you,  and  permit  me  to  depart!"^     When  they 
crowded  around  his  dying  bed,  exclaiming  with  tears 
and  moans,  ^  Wilt  thou  not  pity  us,  our  Father  ?  wilt 
thou  not  compassionate  those  whom  thou  hitherto  haat 
nourished  in  thy  love  ? '  weeping,  as  the  narrator  says, 
with  them  that  wept,  and  lifting  to  heaven  his  dove- 
like  eyes,  he  answered  that  he  was  pressed  between 
two,  not  knowing  whether  to  choose  to  tarry  with  them 
or  to  go  to  Christ ;  and  he  left  it  all  to  the  will  of  Ood. 
It  was  his  last  word,  for  with  it  he  died.     ^^  Happy 
transition ! "  says  one  of  those  who  stood  beside  his  bed, 
^^from  labor  to  rest,  from  hope  to  reward,  from  combat 
to  crown,  from  death  to  life,  from  faith  to  knowledge, 
from  the  far  wandering  to  the  native  home,  from  the 
world  to  the  Father ! "  « 

The  life  on  earth  was  ended  thus,  at  about  nine 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  on  the  twentieth  of  August^ 
A.D.  1153.     It  had  continued  sixty  ^two  years. 

Ladies,  and  Gentlemen :  I  think  of  this  man  as  I  have 
so  imperfectly  described  him,  and  of  the  work  accom- 
plished by  him,  which  I  hope  also  in  a  measure  to  set 
forth  in  subsequent  lectures;  I  see  the  extraordinary 
power  which  he  with  incessant  zeal  exerted  for  what 
to  him  were  noblest  ends,  in  a  century  full  of  ignorance 
and  sin,  of  cruel  strife  and  reckless  ambition,  yet  for 
which  other  ages  had  made  preparation,  and  from  which 
went  large  influence  forward  to  the  following  time; 
and  then  I  trace  him  back  to  the  childhood-years  in 
his  father's  castle,  and  think  of  the  saintly  mother, 
Aletta,  who  bore  him  and  trained  him,  and  gave  him 
utterly  to  God,  and  who  in  the  eagerness  of  her  impas- 

1  Opera,  Vita,  L  lib.  ▼.  cap.  8,  ooL  2263. 

s  Ibid«,  Vita,  L  lib.  t.  cap.  2,  oolL  226S~2260. 


HIS  PEB80NAL  CHARACTERISTICS.  203 

sioned  devotion  sought  to  infuse  the  mother's  spirit 
with  mother's  milk  into  his  veins, — and  I  see,  with 
mingled  admiration  and  awe,  that  that  devout  woman, 
who  died  in  Burgundy  almost  eight  hundred  years  ago, 
has  modified  since  the  world^s  civilization;  that  the 
touch  of  her  spirit,  ethereal  and  immortal,  is  on  your 
hearts  and  mine  to-night ! 


LECTURE  IV. 

BERNARD  OF  CLAIBVAUX:  IN  HIS  MONASTIC 

LIF£. 


LECTURE  IV. 

HSBNABD  OF  GLAmVAUX:  IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UB% 

No  institution  exists  for  centuries,  and  continues  to 
attract  the  reverent  regard  of  many  of  the  best  and  most 
cultured  of  the  time,  which  has  not  a  foundation  in 
wide  and  wholesome  human  tendencies,  or  which  does 
not  minister,  more  or  less  successfully,  to  recognized 
moral  needs  of  mankind.  It  may  be  that  something 
else  will  come,  after  a  time,  to  take  the  place  and  fulfil 
the  office  for  which  at  last  it  is  found  unsuited.  But 
while  it  continues,  and  where  it  continues,  it  may  safely 
be  assumed  that  men  had  found  reason  to  desire  and 
yalue  it,  and  that  they  received  distinct  benefits  from 
it  The  ark  described  in  the  Biblical  story  could  not 
do  the  work  of  a  swift  modem  steamship;  but  in  its 
time,  according  to  the  narrative,  it  had  its  use  and 
served  its  purpose,  by  saving  the  race  from  the  whelm- 
ing flood. 

Something  of  this  general  tenor  may  be  said,  I  am 
sure,  of  that  system  of  monastic  life  which  had  begun  in 
the  East,  but  which  prevailed  in  Europe  so  largely  and 
so  long,  and  which  still  retains  a  definite  place  where 
once  it  had  general  prominence.  It  has  been,  perhaps, 
a  common  impression  with  Protestant  peoples  that  the 
system  operated  only  disastrously  upon  those  who  main* 


208  BBBMAJfD  OF  GLAIBYAUZ  : 

tained  it^  especially  upon  ihoee  whom  it  gathered  into 
conyenta,  and  whose  mind  and  character  it  immediately 
affected ;  that  it  absorbed  into  itself  forces  which  should 
have  been  generously  devoted  to  public  advancement; 
and  that  it  wrought  with  constant  tendency,  not  so  much 
to  educate  or  uplift  the  spirit  as  to  pervert  and  de- 
moralize it^  in  the  men  and  women  assembled  in  its 
homes, —  making  them  selfish,  sour,  fanatical,  disdain- 
ful of  enterprise  and  of  domesticity,  too  often  inciting 
them  to  a  destroying  sensual  indulgence.  Undoubtedly 
there  are  facts  in  both  the  earlier  and  the  later  history 
of  the  system  to  suggest  this  impression,  if  not  wholly 
to  sustain  it ;  like  those  which  were  appealed  to  in  the 
time  of  Henry  Eighth,  to  justify  his  suppression  of  the 
monasteries, — a  suppression  which  would  hardly  have 
been  possible,  even  for  kingly  power,  in  the  midst  of 
communities  prevailingly  Roman  Catholic,  if  a  popu- 
lar belief  in  the  moral  decadence  of  the  suspended  in- 
stitutions had  not  made  the  way  easy ;  ^  or  like  those 
facts  which  are  philosophically  grouped  by  Mr.  Lecky, 
in  his  "  History  of  European  Morals. "  *    I  am  certainly 

1  See  '<  Camden  Society  Pablications,"  ▼o1.  zzW.,  on  *<  Snppreesion  of 
Monasteries ; "  also  Strype's  "Memorials  of  Cranmer/'  roL  L  chap.  9 ; 
Fuller,  "  Charch  History,"  book  ▼!  sec  8.  A  safficient  aocoont  of  the 
matter  is  giren  by  Fronde,  in  his  ''History  of  En^^d,"  vol.  ii  pp. 
896-486. 

The  **  Black  Book  "  presented  by  the  Commissioners  to  Parliament  is 
said  not  now  to  be  in  existence,  but  the  contents  of  it  are  sabstantiaUy 
known.  In  the  preceding  reign  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbnzy,  Cardinal 
Merton,  had  instituted  a  similar  visitation  of  monasteries  in  the  neighbor^ 
hood  of  London,  and  the  description  there  given  of  the  Abbey  of  St.  Al- 
bans is  said  to  represent  aU  the  evils  which  were  subsequently  discovered. 

Erasmus  certainly  knew  the  monks  well,  having  been  one  of  them  ;  and 
in  the  '*  Praise  of  Folly,"  the  "  Colloquies,"  the  "  Adagia,*'  he  indicates 
ftequently  and  clearly  the  lazy  vices  by  which  his  conservative  acholariy 
mind  was  sharply  offended. 

«  VoL^ii  pp.  107-168.    New  York  ed.  187«. 


IN  HIS  MONASnO  UFE.  209 

not  here  to  defend  the  system  against  any  charges  for 
which  proof  may  be  supplied ;  least  of  all,  to  advocate 
any  re-establishment  of  it,  in  our  land  or  in  others. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  gladly  see  that  the  influences  of 
the  modern  civilization  work  constantly  against  it,  and 
that  wherever  it  still  exists  its  existence  is  almost  like 
that  of  an  iceberg  which  has  floated  down  from  the 
original  glacier,  and  which,  however  it  still  may  tower 
above  the  level  expanse  of  waters,  is  being  silently  con* 
sumed  by  the  warm  and  swift  currents  which  envelop 
its  base.  However  it  may  check,  it  cannot  change  those 
dissolving  tides. 

But  we  are  not  now  to  regard  the  plan  of  monastic 
life  in  its  relation  to  modern  times,  or  in  the  fruits 
which  it  showed  when  the  ripeness  of  the  system  had 
turned  to  rottenness.  We  are  to  look  at  it  in  its  par- 
ticular relation  to  the  times  of  Bernard,  and  to  the 
desire  which  such  as  he  felt  for  something  to  minister 
to  the  high  aspiration  of  an  eager  and  a  profound  spir- 
itual mind.  So  regarding  it,  we  shall  see,  I  think,  why 
it  was  that  it  flourished  so  long  and  extended  so  far ; 
and  how  it  was  that  with  his  character,  amid  the  cir- 
cumstances in  which  he  was  placed,  he  was  so  strongly 
attracted  and  attached  to  it. 

If  only  in  justice  to  him,  its  long  and  its  often  splen- 
did history  in  the  centuries  preceding  his  should  be 
recalled  by  us,  and  the  powerful  moral  impulse  which 
early  and  widely  prompted  to  it  should  be  distinctly 
before  our  view.  Let  us  not  forget,  then,  that  the  ten- 
dency toward  a  solitary  life,  detached  from  affairs,  and 
largely  passed  in  ascetic  exercise,  in  prayer  and  con- 
templation, had  appeared  in  the  world,  and  in  heathen 
societies,  before  Christianity  began  to  be  preached.  In 
the  time  of  the  Master  it  was  clearly  exhibited  among 

14 


210  BERNABD  OF  CLAIBVAUX: 

the  Hebrews,  in  the  sect  of  the  Essenes.  But  it  had 
shown  itself  ages  before,  in  Egypt  and  in  India,  in  cen- 
tral Asia  and  in  China.  It  is  not  impossible  that  India 
was  the  birth-place  of  monachism.^  Certainly  both  its 
great  religions  were  penetrated  to  the  centre  by  this 
spirit,  and  the  laws  of  Menu  are  occupied  to  an  impor- 
tant extent  with  regulations  concerning  the  ascetic  life. 
The  Buddhist  monasteries  of  to-day  present  a  parallel 
so  strangely  close  to  those  existing  in  Boman  Catholic 
countries  tiiat  travellers  find  it  hard  to  believe  that 
the  one  system  or  the  other  has  not  borrowed  from  its 
counterpart  Astonished  Romanists  have  sometimes 
suspected  that  the  Buddhist  monasteries,  in  Thibet  or 
Tartary,  for  example,  had  been  anticipative  diabolical 
counterfeits  of  the  Christian  institutions  which  were 
later  to  appear.^    A  resemblance  so  close,  continuing 

1  Haidwick,  Christ  and  Other  Masters,  p.  246.     London  ed.  1882. 

'  The  Abb^  Hue  was  amazed  at  the  resemblances  between  the  cera-^ 
menial  of  his  own  choich  and  that  of  Buddhism,  though  he  sought  to 
explain  them  by  the  hypothesis  that  the  Buddhists  must  have  borrowed 
from  the  Catholics. 

"The  cross,  the  mitre,  the  dalmatica,  the  cope,  which  the  Gnuid 
Lamas  wear  on  their  journeys,  or  when  they  are  performing  some  cersmony 
out  of  the  temple ;  the  service  with  double  choirs,  the  psalmody,  the  ex- 
orcisms ;  the  censer  suspended  from  fiTe  chains,  and  which  you  can  open 
or  close  at  pleasure  ;  the  benedictions  given  by  the  Lamas  by  extending 
the  right  hand  over  the  heads  of  the  faithful ;  the  chaplet,  ecclesiastical 
celibacy,  spiritual  retirement,  the  worship  of  the  saints,  the  fituts,  the  pro- 
cessions, the  litanies,  the  holy  water,  —  all  these  are  analogies  between  the 
Buddhists  and  ourselves.  Can  it  be  said  that  these  analogies  are  of  Chris- 
tian origin  f  We  think  so."  Yet  he  admits  that  neither  in  the  monu- 
ments of  the  country,  nor  in  its  traditions,  has  he  found  any  proof  of  their 
importation,  —  that  the  theory  rests  upon  coigecture  only.  —  Tra»el$  m 
Tartary,  Thibet,  and  China,  p.  822.     London  ed.,  1856. 

To  the  list  given  by  Hue  many  other  striking  particulars  may  be  added, 
according  to  the  testimony  of  observant  travellers  ;  for  example,  the  ton- 
sure  of  priests,  rosaries  of  coral  and  amber,  the  lighted  lamps  in  churchei^ 
pictoxes  aM images,  especially  of  the  " Queen  of  Heaven"  with  a  child  ia 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFE.  211 

80  long,  between  institutions  so  widely  separated,  and 
belonging  to  religions  in  such  contrast  with  each  other, 
is  one  of  the  remarkable  facts  in  history ;  and  it  shows, 
as  I  think,  a  strong  and  constant  moral  tendency  in  the 
spiritual  nature  of  man,  when  deeply  stirred  and  consci- 
entiously impressed,  toward  those  forms  of  activity  which 
the  convent  offers.  There  must  be  something  there  for 
which  the  heart  hungers,  in  certain  moods,  with  a  de- 
sire that  cannot  or  could  not  be  elsewhere  satisfied. 

Very  early  after  Christianity  was  preached  these 
tendencies  appeared,  as  we  know,  on  different  sides, 
and  with  vast  power.  There  had  long  been  congre- 
gations of  monks  connected  with  certain  Egyptian  tem- 
ples ;  and  when  Paul  of  Thebes,  ^^  the  first  hermit, "  with 
Saint  Anthony  appeared  there,  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
third  century,  the  Coptic  atmosphere  already  favored 
them,  and  their  example  was  rapidly  followed.  A 
century  later  Sozomen  says  that  the  disciples  of  An- 
thony were  not  only  in  Egypt,  but  in  Palestine,  —  where 
they  had  been  introduced  by  Hilarion, — in  Syria,  Arabia, 
and  North  Africa.  He  speaks  of  one  ascetic  leader 
having  three  thousand  disciples ;  of  another  who  had  a 
thousand ;  of  two  thousand  monks  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Alexandria;  of  fifty  convents  in  the  district  of 
Nitria.^  The  mountains  and  the  deserts  appear  to 
have  been  full  of  them :  and  it  is  probably  not  an  ex- 

lier  arms,  extreme  anction,  prayen  for  the  dead,  fasts  and  penanoes,  con- 
fenion  to  priests,  the  consecmtion  of  bishops,  a  general  hierarchy,  etc.,  etc. 

The  Jesuit  Graeber  had  early  set  forth  what  seemed  to  him  the  just  ex- 
planation :  "Thns  hath  the  Devil,  through  his  innate  malignity,  trans- 
ferred to  the  worship  of  this  people  [of  Thibet]  that  veneration  which  is 
due  only  to  the  Pope  of  Rome,  Christ's  Vicar,  in  the  same  manner  as  he 
hath  done  all  the  other  mysteries  of  the  Christian  Religion.'*  See  Pinker^ 
ton's  "  Voyages  and  Travels,"  vol.  vii.  p.  558.     Tx»ndon  ed.  1811. 

1  EccL  Hist,  lib.  i  cap.  18  ;  lib.  vi.  caps.  28»  29,  81. 


212  BEBNABD  OF  GLAmVAUZ  : 

trayagant  computation  which  reckons  that  at  the  end  of 
the  fourth  century,  or  early  in  the  fifth,  there  were  of 
all  claBses  of  monks  nearly  or  quite  one  hundred 
thousand  in  Egypt  alone ;  of  whose  courage,  patience, 
humility,  charity,  as  well  as  of  their  silence,  their 
abstinence  from  food,  and  their  persistent  aversion  to 
baths,  the  most  surprising  stories  were  current 

The  early  anchorets,  living  in  solitude,  after  a  while 
gave  place  to  the  cenobites,  seeking  the  same  ends,  but 
dwelling  in  communities.  Jerome,  Athanasius,  Basil 
the  Great,  John  Chrysostom,  grandest  of  preachers  and 
a  true  hero  and  martyr,  Gregory  Nazianzen,  Gregory 
of  Nyssa,  with  other  eminent  leaders  in  the  Church,  be- 
came the  eloquent  advocates  of  the  system.  It  was 
introduced  into  Italy,  probably  by  Athanasius,  at  about 
the  middle  of  the  fourth  century,  and  was  speedily  es- 
tablished in  the  capital  and  its  neighborhood,  and 
throughout  the  peninsula.  Augustine  and  Ambrose 
became  its  advocates.  Martin  of  Tours  introduced  it 
into  Gaul.  It  appeared  ere  long  in  Burgundy,  in 
Spain,  along  the  banks  of  the  Danube,  in  the  valleys 
of  Wales,  and  in  Ireland.  The  wealthy  and  the  fa- 
mous as  well  as  the  poor  were  enrolled  in  the  mon- 
asteries; and  early  in  the  sixth  century  the  rule  of 
Benedict  was  formulated  for  his  great  convent  of  Monte 
Cassino,  which  rule  became  afterward  a  governing  law 
for  distributed  local  convents,  and  a  bond  of  union 
among  them. 

With  the  practical  organizing  genius  of  the  West 
thus  moulding  the  system,  restraining  the  abuses  which 
were  already  connected  with  it,  and  aiding  to  secure 
its  higher  ends,  it  took  more  rapid  and  extensive  de- 
velopment, and  became  an  immense  power  in  Europe. 
Some  of   the  monasteries  matured    into  great    mis« 


m  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  218 

sionary  centres:  others  were  early  recognized  as 
homes  of  knowledge  and  literature,  and  otiiers  still 
of  practical  arts.  Those  at  the  head  of  them  were 
often  celebrated  men,  having  vast  iniSuence  in  their 
hands.  Princes  and  kings  were  gladly  numbered 
among  the  lay  brothers.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  fully 
entered  the  convents;  and  men  of  the  highest  rank 
and  repute  were  found  serving  faithfully  in  kitchen  or 
mill,  cutting  faggots,  gathering  crops,  or  delighting 
to  drive  the  pigs  to  the  field.  ^  William  Firsts  Duke 
of  Normandy,  had  desired  to  leave  everything  of  the 
world,  and  to  retire  to  the  Abbey  of  Jumidges,  but  the 
abbot  would  not  permit  it.  Hugh  First  of  Burgundy 
had  eagerly  done  the  same  thing  at  Clugni,  as  I  have 
before  said.  Henry  Second,  Emperor  of  Germany, 
at  the  Abbey  church  of  St  Anne,  at  Verdun,  had 
cried  with  the  Psalmist,  '^  This  is  the  rest  which  I  have 
chosen,  and  shall  be  my  habitation  forever. ''  A  monk 
who  heard  it  apprised  the  abbot,  who  thereupon  called 
the  emperor  before  him  and  asked  his  intentions.  Find- 
ing him  determined  to  become  a  monk,  the  abbot  took 
from  him  a  promise  of  obedience  unto  death,  according 
to  the  rule  of  the  order,  and  then  said,  ^^Well,  I  re- 
ceive you  as  a  monk,  and  take  the  care  of  your  soul 
from  this  day  forward ;  what  I  order  I  charge  you  to 
perform,  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord.  Now  return  to  the 
government  of  the  empire  which  the  Lord  has  entrusted 
to  you,  and  watch  with  fear  and  trembling,  with  all 
your  might,  over  the  welfare  of  the  kingdom."     The 

1  "Qnanto  nobiliores  erant  in  sieciilo,  tanto  86  contemtibilioribus 
offidis  occa]>ari  deddeniDt,  at  qui  qaondam  erant  comites  vel  marchionea 
in  ssculo  nanc  in  coquina,  Tel  pistrino  fratribns  semre,  yel  porcoe  eoram 
in  eampo  pascere,  pro  Bummia  deliciia  oompntent."  [An.  108S.]  See 
N««id«r,  Hiat  of  the  Chnroh,  yoL  iy.  p.  288,  note. 


214  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

emperor  obeyed  with  regret^  as  being  bound  by  his 
vow;  he  lived  thereafter  a  truly  monastic  life  on  the 
throne,  and  was  subsequently  honored  by  the  Church  as 
a  saint  ^  Down  to  the  time  of  the  Reformation  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  the  monastic  establishments  both  for 
men  and  for  women  continued  numerous  and  powerful, 
though  many  certainly  had  fearfully  fallen  from  the 
early  ideal,  and  some  had  become  unspeakably  corrupt 
They  have  never  since  regained  their  attractiveness  for 
the  best  minds ;  and  with  the  changed  conditions  of  so- 
ciety it  is  quite  certain  that  they  will  not.  But  that  for 
centuries  they  had  such  place  and  power  in  the  world  is 
a  significant  and  memorable  fact,  which  we  may  not 
forget  in  studying  the  personal  career  of  Bernard. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century,  when  his 
active  life  commenced,  these  monastic  institutions  were 
rising  to  the  height  of  their  usefulness  and  their  fame. 
The  vow  of  celibacy  detached  men  from  the  more  inti- 
mate relationships  of  life;  the  vow  of  poverty  made 
worldly  possessions  unlawful  to  them ;  the  vow  of  obe- 
dience had  a  tendency  at  least  to  conquer  self-will,  and 
to  form  the  habit  of  submitting  the  life  to  a  common 
and  careful  ethical  regulation.  Whoever,  then,  desired 
to  have  the  soul  infused  and  pervaded  by  the  Divine  life, 
was  naturally  allured  to  these  retreats.  Whoever  would 
have  the  spiritual  sensibility  stimulated  and  trained, 
till  visions  became  familiar,  till  the  line  of  horizon 
between  life  on  earth  and  life  on  high  became  impal- 
pable to  the  bright  expectation,  till  the  soul  amid  the 
circles  of  time  felt  itself  already  affined  to  eternity,  was 
drawn  to  the  convent,  to  climb  with  others  the  steep 
path  of  celestial  virtue.  With  such  came,  too,  those 
who  desired  a  fairer  knowledge  of  human  things,  or 

^  Micbalot,  Hist.  d»  Fnnoe^  tom.  il  pp.  199, 140. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  215 

who  only  sought  for  a  tranquil  and  an  orderly  life  amid 
the  tumultuous  turmoil  of  the  times,  wishing  to  find 
such  friendly  association  with  others  of  their  kind  as 
there  seemed  no  room  for  anywhere  else.  With  these 
came  also,  and  in  large  numbers,  the  weak,  the  poor, 
the  timid,  and  the  persecuted,  who  sought  safe  refuge 
among  the  monks.  The  convent  confronted  the  feudal 
castle,  and  it  sheltered  those  whom  the  other  despoiled. 
Noble  women  entered  nunneries  to  protect  their  chas- 
tity ;  as  the  Princess  Matilda,  afterward  wife  of  Henry 
First  of  England,  known  in  history  as  ^^  the  good  queen 
Maude,"  entered  the  nunnery  at  Bomsey  in  her  youth  to 
escape  the  licentious  pursuit  of  Norman  nobles.^ 

There  had  been  a  vast  revival  of  the  spirit,  and  a  res* 
toration  of  the  stricter  forms,  of  monastic  life  in  the 
preceding  century.  It  had  f elt^  of  course,  the  powerful 
impulse  given  to  all  Church  development  by  Gregory 
Seventh.  New  orders  of  monks  had  been  established, 
old  institutions  had  come  to  fresh  prominence  and 
were  breaking  forth  into  new  exhibitions  of  zeal  and 
fervor.  Great  memories  consecrated  some  of  the  ab- 
beys. The  monks  had  been  lai^ely  the  civilizers  of 
Europe.  Accustomed  to  labor,  inured  to  hardship,  con- 
temptuous of  death,  living  in  caves  or  birchen  huts, 
with  patient  and  undaunted  toil-  they  had  widely  sub- 
dued the  savage  country,  covered  with  forests,  stained 
with  great  tracts  of  desert  land,  sterile  with  bogs  and 
drowned  with  swamps,  where  the  elk  and  the  buffalo,  the 
bear  and  the  wolf,  were  not  so  fierce  as  the  savage  men 
who  roamed  and  fought  beneath  the  shades.  More  than 
oBce  the  monastery  had  become  the  nucleus  of  the  city. 
It  was  the  centre  of  civilized  industry,  as  well  as  the 

1  MatUda  to  Aiuelm  (Eadmer,  ''Hist.  Noyor."  lib.  iii.):  "Serwidi 
corjpoTJt  m«i  oftOM  coDtn  foie&tem  Noimanoram  libidinem." 


216  BERNAED  OF  GLAIBTAUZ  : 

sjrmbol  of  moral  aspiration,  in  an  age  of  general  con- 
fusion  and  strife.  It  had  maintained  the  unending 
struggle  against  cruelty  in  high  places,  and  had  borne 
aloft  the  Christian  doctrine  that  society  is  bound  to 
protect  the  weak«  It  exalted  before  men  the  solenm 
thought  of  their  relation  to  each  other,  through  their 
common  relation  to  Qod  and  the  Hereafter ;  and  so  it 
contributed,  with  an  essential  and  an  inestimable  force, 
to  ennoble  society. 

Inspiriting  legends  gave  their  lustre  to  some  of  the 
abbeys,  coming  from  the  spring-time  of  monastic  life 
upon  the  rugged  and  battle-swept  Gaul :  of  Launomar, 
whose  voice  had  stopped  wolves  in  their  course,  and 
delivered  their  prey ;  of  Saint  Lienor,  to  whom,  in  hfl 
urgent  need  of  grain,  a  little  white  bird  had  brought 
grains  of  wheat,  showing  him  where  it  had  been  planted ; 
of  Saint  Imier,  who  had  heard  at  midnight  in  his 
lonely  hermitage  the  future  bells  of  his  monastery 
ringing,  and  had  followed  the  mysterious  signal  to 
the  fountain  in  the  Jura  which  still  keeps  his  name; 
of  Thdodulph  of  Saint  Thierry,  of  illustrious  birth, 
who  had  been  ploughman  for  his  monastery  for  twenty 
years,  and  whose  rude  plough,  after  he  became  abbot, 
had  been  hung  in  the  church  of  a  neighboring  village 
as  a  sacred  memoriaL^ 

In  Burgundy  particularly,  in  Bernard's  time,  the 
monastic  establishments  were  multiplying  in  number, 
and  had  peculiar  favor  with  the  people.  The  abbey  of 
St  Benignus  at  Dijon,  whose  abbot  proposed  the  oath 
to  the  Duke  on  his  accession,  giving  him  also  the  robe 
and  ring  and  ducal  crown,  and  that  of  Olugni,  near 
M&con,  were  the  most  conspicuous.     That  of  Ojiteauz, 

^  For  these  and  other  legenda,  see  Montalembert's  **  Mooksof  the  West,' 
lib.  Ti,  especially  voL  ii  pp.  360»  824,  868»  878^  at  aL 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  817 

near  Chftlons,  a  dozen  miles  from  Dijon,  was  at  this 
time  poor  and  undistinguished ;  but  so  many  offshoots 
subsequently  sprang  from  it  that  a  few  centuries  later 
the  abbot  of  Giteaux  was  recognized  as  their  superior 
by  more  than  three  thousand  affiliated  monasteries,  in 
various  countries.^  In  the  childhood  of  Bernard  the 
Duke  of  Burgundy,  the  feudal  lord  of  the  family,  had 
prayed  in  the  oratory  of  the  then  mean  and  obscure 
monastery,  and  bad  built  for  himself  a  house  near  it ; 
and  when  he  died,  far  from  home,  on  a  journey  to 
Jerusalem,  his  last  wish  had  been  that  his  body  might 
be  brought  thither,  and  laid  to  rest  in  its  common  place 
of  sleep.  There,  therefore,  Jiis  dust  reposed,  while  the 
thunders  of  war  resounded  in  the  land,  and  the  monks 
in  their  seclusion  prayed  for  the  soul  of  their  dead 
benefactor. 

When  Bernard,  after  the  death  of  his  mother,  had 
decisiyely  turned  from  every  other  career, —  of  arms,  of 
courts,  of  letters,  or  of  Church-preferment, —  to  enter 
the  distinctively  religious  life,  he  turned  naturally,  with 
a  really  irresistible  impulse,  toward  the  convent  and  its 
austere  regulation;  and  with  his  intense  moral  earnest- 
ness he  turned  to  that  form  of  cloister-life  which  was 
most  signally  strict  and  severe,  in  sharpest  contrast 
not  only  with  the  world  and  its  ambitions,  but  with  the 
offensive  secular  temper  prevailing  widely  throughout 
the  Church.  Drawing  around  him,  in  the  enthusiasm 
of  a  common  purpose,  not  only  his  brothers  and  other 
relatives,  as  I  have  said,  but  others  whcnn  he  bad  known 
and  over  whom  his  spirit  had  power,  —  the  cultivated  and 
noble  as  well  as  the  humbler,  — he  went  on  to  prepare 

1  Son  abb^  Ythh&  des  abb^  ^tait  reconna  pour  chef  d'ordre,  en  1401, 
par  trois  mille  deux  cent  cinqnante-deox  monast^rea.  —  Miohxlbt, 
tU  Frcme^  torn,  ii  p.  98. 


216  BEBNARD  OP  CLAIBTAUX  : 

himself  and  tibem  for  monastic  life.  His  moving  elo- 
quence,  and  his  singular  ascendency  over  men's  minds, 
were  as  evident  at  first  as  perhaps  they  ever  were  after- 
ward. A  flash  of  conviction  strack  many  souls,  we  are 
told,  as  he  spoke  of  the  fugitive  joys  of  the  world,  of  the 
many  miseries  of  life  on  earth,  of  quick-coming  death, 
and  of  the  life  beyond  the  grave,  which,  whether  for  the 
good  or  the  evil,  should  be  etemaL  The  high-bom  and 
the  accomplished  heard  him,  as  well  as  those  of  the 
commoner  sort,  with  new  emotions  stirring  in  their 
hearts ;  and  so  startling  was  the  impression  of  his  dis- 
courses that  mothers  withdrew  their  sons  from  his 
reach,  wives  kept  their  husbands  from  hearing  him, 
and  friends  diverted  the  attention  of  their  friends,  lest 
the  too  persuasive  voice  should  carry  them  with  him  4n 
spite  of  all  counter-attractions.^  Retiring  after  a  little, 
with  the  group  of  his  devoted  companions,  to  Chdtillon, 
where  before  he  had  pursued  secular  studies,  Bernard 
determined  to  put  to  the  test  the  sincerity  and  steadi- 
ness of  their  purpose,  and  of  his  own,  and  to  finish 
there  the  preparation  for  final  entrance  into  the  con- 
vent After  six  months  had  so  been  passed,  and  all 
their  business  relations  in  the  world  had  been  closed,' 

^  CoBpit  noTttm  induere  hominem,  et  cum  quibus  de  literia  ssBcoli,  sea 
de  88Bcalo  ipso  agere  solebat,  de  seriis  et  conyeraioxie  tractare ;  oatendena 
gaudia  mnndi  fugitiva,  vitn  miaeriaa^  oelerem  mortem,  vitam  post  mortem, 
sea  in  bonis,  sea  in  malis,  perpetaam  fore.  Qaid  mnlta  1  Quotqaot  ad 
hoc  pnsordinati  erant,  operante  in  eis  gratia  Dei,  et  ^erbo  yirtutis  igos,  et 
oratioue  et  instantia  servi  ejus,  primo  canctati,  deinde  compuncti,  alter  post 
alteram  credebant  et  oonsentiebant  .  .  .  Jamqae  eo  paUice  et  priTatim 
pnedicante,  matres  filios  absoondebant,  azores  detinebant  roaritoe,  amiei 
amicoe  arertebant :  qaia  voci  ejus  Spiritos  sanctus  tantie  dabat  yocem 
▼irtntis,  ut  viz  aliqais  aliquem  teneret  affectns.  —  Opera,  toL  sec,  Vita, 
L  cap.  iiL  coll.  2101-2102. 

*  Ipsi  vero  qnasi  mensibas  sex  post  primam  propositam  in  sascalari 
habita  stabant,  at  proinde  plares  congregarentar,  dam  quorumdam  nsgotia 
par  id  tinpom  •xjodi^bantar.  —  IHcL,  Vita,  i  cap.  8,  ooL  210S, 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  219 

they  applied  for  admission  and  were  received  at  the 
monastery  of  Citeaux,  the  company  numbering  more 
than  thirty,  and  its  animating  leader  being  but  twenty- 
two  years  of  age. 

In  all  external  things  the  convent  at  Giteaux  was  at 
that  time  far  less  attractive  than  the  great  and  famous 
abbey  of  Clugni,  not  remote  from  it  That  wealthy  and 
venerable  establishment,  founded  already  for  two  cen- 
turies, was  the  greatest  of  the  Bnrgundian  abbeys,  and 
had  a  repute  in  Europe  second  only  to  that  of  the  mon- 
astery established  by  Benedict  himself  on  Monte  Cas- 
sino.  Hildebrand,  as  I  have  said,  had  gone  from  it 
on  his  way  to  the  papacy ;  so  had  Urban  Second,  Pas- 
chal Second,  among  his  successors.  It  could  entertain 
a  pope,  a  king,  princes,  with  their  suites  of  attendants, 
without  inconvenience.  ^  Its  abbot  was  really  a  prince 
in  the  realm,  and  had  the  power  of  coining  money  to 
be  used  in  his  domains.  Soon  after  this,  he  became  by 
favor  of  the  Pope,  Galixtus  Second,  a  permanent  prince 
cardinal  in  the  Church,  and  was  endowed  with  other 
exceptional  privileges.  Several  of  the  distinguished 
Oluniac  abbots  had  been  canonized;  and  the  institu- 
tion seemed  only  approaching  at  that  time  the  extraor- 
dinary height  of  its  power  and  fame.  Its  magnificent 
Abbey-church,  which  had  been  begun  a.d.  1089,  and 
which  was  consecrated  by  Innocent  Second,  a.d. 
1181,  was  then,  of  course,  far  on  the  way  toward  that 
completion  which  made  it  subsequently  the  vastest 
church  ever  built  in  Prance,  covering  seventy  thousand 
square  feet,  while  also  the  most  distinguished  for  its 

^  Telle  ^toit  U  gplendenr  de  eee  monast^res,  qne  Clnny  Kfut  ane  fois 
le  pape,  le  roi  de  France,  et  je  ne  sail  oombien  de  prinoes  ayeo  leur  suite, 
•ana  que  lea  mdnes  ae  d^rangeaaaent.  —  Miohblxt:  Sid,  d$  I^nee,  torn. 


220  BBBNABD  OF  GLAIBTAUX: 

massive  magnificence.  ^  When  at  last  this  church,  after 
standing  seven  hundred  years,  became  the  prey  of  a 
frantic  revolutionary  violence,  it  took  years  to  destroy 
it;  and  when  the  great  tower  was  finally  overthrown, 
in  A.D.  1811,  within  the  memory  of  living  men,  the 
neighboring  country  heard  and  felt  the  tremendous 
shock. 

To  this  abbey,  rich  and  renowned,  opening  an  easy 
way  to  the  highest  Church-dignities,  and  in  which  a 
liberal  interpretation  of  the  rule  of  Benedict  was  fa- 
miliar, Bernard  and  his  companions  might  have  gone, 
to  be  at  once  welcomed  and  honored.  He  chose  instead 
of  it  the  recent,  weak,  and  iminviting  monastery  of 
Giteaux,  only  founded  when  he  was  a  lad  of  seven 
years  [a.d.  1098],  but  already  languishing  in  its  youth 
by  reason  of  the  exceptional  strictness  of  its  regimen. 
Few  converts  were  allured  to  a  discipline  so  severe. 
The  number  of  the  monks  constantly  decreased ;  a  fatal 
disease  had  recently  sadly  thinned  their  number,  and 
it  seemed  as  if  the  existence  of  the  convent  was  ap- 
proaching its  end.^  But  to  this  comparatively  bare, 
bleak,  and  desolate  establishment,  with  the  shadow  of 
death  hanging  over  it,  Bernard  drew  his  companions 
with  him ;  and  into  it  they  were  solemnly  received,  at 
first  for  the  year  of  their  novitiate,  and  afterward  on 
their  final  profession. 

^  See  FeigoBson's  "  Handbook  of  Aichiteetiire,"  pjk  661,  662.  London 
ed.  1859. 

*  Eo  tempore  novelliu  et  pnsOliis  grez  CistercienciB  sab  abbate  degens, 
▼iro  Tenerabili  Stepbano,  cum  jam  graviter  ei  tedio  ease  inciperet  paacitas 
sua,  et  omnia  apes  poateritatia  dedderet,  in  qnam  aancte  illiaa  panpertatia 
hereditaa  tranafanderetnr,  yenerantibus  omnibna  in  eis  viUe  aanctitatem. 
Bed  refogientibae  anateritatem  ;  repente  divina  hao  viaitatione  tarn  leta, 
tarn  inaperata,  tam  anbita  Intificatus  eat,  at  in  die  ilia  responsnm  hoc  « 
Spirita  aancto  accepisse  aibi  domoa  ilia  yideretor :  "Lntare^  aterilia  qiw 
MA  puiebMi''  etc.  —  Opera,  Vita,  i.  cap.  8,  ooL  2104. 


IN  UIS  MONASTIC  LIFR.  221 

Here  he  found  all  that  could  be  desired  in  the  way  of 
an  austere  regulation  of  life.  It  was  a  reformed  and  a 
Puritan  monastery.  It  is  reported,  I  believe,  of  Horace 
Walpole,  that  when  asked  why  he  did  not  become  a 
Roman  Catholic,  his  reply  was  that  ^^  it  would  give  him 
too  much  to  swallow,  and  too  little  to  eat "  The  monks 
at  Giteaux  felt  neither  difficulty.  The  less  they  ate, 
and  the  more  they  absorbed  of  what  to  them  was  Divine 
doctrine,  the  more  nearly  they  felt  themselves  fulfilling 
their  purpose,  and  approaching  the  heavens.  One  meal 
a  day,  usually  at  about  noon,  without  meat,  fish,  or 
eggs,  commonly  without  milk,  with  a  slight  supper 
of  fruit  or  herbs;  an  utter  poverty  of  dress,  such  as 
had  been  common  in  imperial  days  for  the  Italian 
serf  working  on  farms,  from  whom  indeed  it  had  been 
copied;  nothing  except  assiduous  labor  to  interrupt 
the  succession  of  prayer,  song,  meditation,  reading^ 
writing,  prayer,  which  began  with  matins  at  earliest 
morning,  and  ended  with  compline,  at  eight  or  after 
on  the  following  evening, —  this  was  the  rule  of  life  at 
Citeaux;  sufficiently  exacting  and  rigorous,  it  would 
seem,  to  satisfy  any  possible  wish  for  release  from 
luxury,  and  severance  from  the  world. 

Yet  even  this  austere  rule  did  not  wholly  content 
Bernard.  All  time  given  to  sleep  he  regarded  as 
wasted,  counting  the  sleeping  as  for  the  time  practi- 
cally dead;  and  though  he  was  not  able  to  pass  the 
entire  night  in  wakefulness,  he  certainly  came  as  near 
it  as  is  possible  to  man.^    Through  his  excessive  ab- 

1  Qaid  enim  dicam  de  somno^  qui  in  caterb  hominiboB  solet  ease  re* 
fectio  labonnn  et  sensamn,  aut  mentium  recreatio  ?  Extunc  nsqae  hodie 
TJgflat  ultra  poasibilitatem  humanam.  NnUum  enim  tempos  magis  se 
perdere  oonqaeri  solet,  qnam  quo  dormit,  idoneam  satis  repntans  com- 
paiationem  mortis  et  somni:  ut  sic  dormientes  videantnr  mortni  apod 


1 


222  BEBNABD  OP  GLAIBYAUX  : 

Btinence  from  food  he  lost  all  relish  for  it,  almost  all 
power  of  assimilating  it^  and  made  himself  the  infirm 
invalid  that  he  continued  to  be  through  life.  When  he 
could  not,  by  reason  of  physical  feebleness,  do  the  com- 
mon work  of  the  monastery,  he  took  the  most  menial 
offices  upon  him,  to  make  up  for  the  lack  of  more  vig- 
orous service.^  In  all  physical  self-discipline  his  aim 
was  not  merely  to  conquer  the  desires  of  the  jQesh  but 
the  senses  themselves,  through  which  desire  might  be 
awakened;  practically,  to  ^^keep  under  the  body"  by 
suspending  its  functions.  Naturally,  therefore,  he 
came  after  a  time  into  that  state  of  mind,  —  abstracted, 
pre-occupied,  unrelated  to  sensible  things,  almost  vi- 
tally detached  from  the  body,  —  in  which  seeing  he  saw 
not,  hearing  he  heard  not ;  three  windows  in  the  room 
were  the  same  to  him  as  one,  and  of  anything  external 
which  happened  to  him  his  memory  retained  no  im- 
pression.' But  prayer  and  meditation  were  his  solace 
and  support,  while  nature  retained,  as  I  have  said,  her 
fine  and  animating  charm  for  his  soul. 

At  the  end  of  a  year  he  made  his  final  profession  as  a 
monk,  in  the  customary  solemn  service ;  and  little  more 
than  a  year  after,  a.d.  1115,  he  was  himself  sent  out  as 

hominesi  qnomodo  apad  Deum  mortal  donnientea.  . . .  Quantam  enim  ad 
Tigilias,  yigiliamm  ei  modoa  est  non  totam  Doctem  doeore  inaomnenL  — 
Opera^  vol.  sec.,  Vita,  i.  cap.  4,  ool.  2107. 

^  Fodieudo,  seu  ligna  csedendo,  propriis  hazneris  deportaado,  Tel  qni- 
bualibet  laboribns  SBqne  laborioaia  illad  redimebat.  VU  vero  yires  defide- 
bant,  ad  yiliora  qu»qae  opera  oonfugienR,  laborem  homilittte  oompeDaabat 
—  Opera,  Vita,  I  cap.  4,  col.  2108. 

'  In  nuUo  sibi  parcena,  inatabat  omnimodia  mortificare  non  aolam  oon- 
eapiaoentiaa  camia,  que  per  aenaoa  corporia  fiant,  aed  et  aenaoa  ipaoa  per 
qaoa  fiunt. .  .  .  Totaaqae  abaorptna  in  apiritnm,  ape  tola  in  Deum  directa, 
intentione  aeu  meditatione  apiritnali  tota  oocapata  memoria,  Tidena  non 
Tidebat,  audiena  non  audiebat ;  nihil  sapiebat  gustanti,  vix  aiiquid  aenaa 
aliqno  corporia  aentiebat.  —  Opera,  Vita,  1.  cap.  4,  col.  2106. 


IN  HIB  MONASTIC  UFB.  228 

abbot,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  with  twelve  monks  in 
his  company,  to  fomid  a  new  monastery.  His  coming 
with  many  companions  to  Citeaux  had  given  vast  im- 
pulse to  that  tiien  weak  and  wasted  establishment 
More  applicants  had  been  drawn  to  it  than  it  could 
accommodate,  and  two  colonies  had  already  been 
sent  forth:  one  to  establish  the  abbey  of  Fert^  near 
Ch&lons ;  another,  under  Hugh  of  M&con,  an  early  friend 
of  Bernard,  to  found  an  abbey  at  Pontigny.  Now  went 
the  third,  with  himself  for  their  young  leader.  The 
twelve  represented  the  twelve  Apostles,  while  Bernard 
at  the  head,  bearing  the  cross,  and  leading  in  a  solemn 
chant,  was  to  them  in  the  place  of  the  Master.  It 
strikingly  illustrates  the  impression  made  upon  his 
associates  by  his  fine  and  strong  qualities,  with  his 
power  of  leadership,  and  the  perfect  confidence  which 
all  reposed  in  him,  that  at  so  early  an  age  he  should 
have  been  decisively  set  apart  for  an  office  and  a  work 
so  important  and  so  difficult.  But  certainly  the  result 
justified  the  selection. 

Leaving  the  lamenting  monks  of  Citeaux,  and  going 
northward  over  the  broken  and  hilly  country  to  the  dis- 
tance of  nearly  a  hundred  miles,  passing  Dijon,  where 
his  mother  lay  buried,  and  Fontaines,  where  his  child- 
hood had  been  passed,  and  Gh&tillon,  where  the  studies 
of  youth  had  engaged  him,  he  came  with  his  compan- 
ions to  a  deep  valley,  eight  miles  in  length  by  three  in 
breadth,  opening  toward  the  east,  covered  with  forests, 
with  a  stream  of  rapid  water,  the  river  Aube,  running 
trough  it.  This  valley  had  been  granted  ta  the  abbey 
of  Citeaux  by  Hugh,  a  knight  of  Champagne,  for  the 
site  of  a  monastery.  It  was  a  wild  and  desolate  place, 
having  borne  the  name  at  an  earlier  time  of  *^  The  Val- 
ley of  Wormwood,''  from  the  abundance  of  the  bitter 


224  BERNARD  OP  CLAIRYAUZ: 

plant  growing  in  it,  and  having  made  the  name  morally 
appropriate  by  the  shelter  which  it  had  offered  to  bands 
of  robbers.  It  has  been  often  and  naturally  supposed 
that  it  took  the  new  and  illustrious  name  of  Clara 
Yallis,  or  Olairvaux,  from  the  founding  of  the  abbey  by 
Bernard,  with  the  local  changes  subsequently  wrought 
This  might  easily  have  been ;  but  the  valley  seems  to 
have  gained  its  new  name  before  he  saw  it^  and  on  the 
whole  to  have  fairly  deserved  it 

Two  ranges  of  hills,  of  about  equal  height,  approached 
each  other  at  the  west,  where  the  abbey  was  built,  but 
were  separated  more  widely  toward  the  east,  to  en- 
close a  broad  area  of  what  afterward  became  fields  and 
meadows,  through  which  flowed  the  river.  The  morn- 
ing sun  shone  full  on  the  valley,  in  all  its  extent ;  while 
still  in  the  late  afternoon,  though  the  abbey  itself  might 
be  in  shadow,  the  hills  on  either  side,  northward  or 
southward,  received  the  sunshine,  and  kept  the  air  full 
of  its  beauty  until  the  sun  had  passed  the  horizon. 
After  long  and  skilful  labor  had  been  expended  by  the 
monks  on  both  uplands  and  meadow,  cutting,  digging, 
subduing  the  soil,  planting,  reaping,  and  dividing  the 
stream  into  artificial  rivulets  for  better  irrigation,  the 
place  came  to  be  to  all  who  saw  it  one  of  singular,  placid 
beauty.  On  the  hills  on  one  side  of  the  abbey  were 
then  vineyards,  on  the  other  side  fruit-orchards;  a 
branch  of  the  river  was  made  to  run  beneath  the  walls 
of  the  abbey,  and  to  turn  the  wheel  for  the  tannery  and 
the  mills;  toward  the  east  were  gardens,  orchards, 
meadows,  and  a  fish-pond;  on  the  west  a  fountain  of 
the  sweetest  sparkling  water, —  the  whole  making  a 
scene  so  full  of  rural  richness  and  charm  that  they  who 
had  dwelt  in  it,  and  by  their  labor  had  contributed  to 
transform  it,  could  almost  never  willingly  be  separated 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFB.  225 

from  it^  But  this  result  was  only  reached  after  years 
of  hardship,  of  patient  endurance  and  strenuous  toil; 
and  the  early  life  there  was  enough  to  make  even  the 
enemies  of  the  monks,  if  such  there  were,  silent  if  not 
sad  with  compassionate  sympathy. 

It  was  in  June  that  they  had  left  Citeaux,  and  prob- 
ably not  less  than  two  weeks  had  been  occupied  in  the 
journey,  accomplished  on  foot,  by  men  bearing  burdens. 
They  reached  tiie  valley  too  late,  therefore,  while  they 
also  found  it  too  densely  wooded,  to  allow  the  hope  of  a 
speedy  harvest  from  seed  then  sown.  Their  first  work 
must  be  the  erection  of  a  rude  house  for  themselves, 
in  which  chapel,  refectory,  dormitory,  workshop  were 
under  one  roof,  with  a  floor  of  earth,  wooden  boxes  for 
beds,  and  logs  for  pillows.  This  was  not  finished  till 
autumn;  and  then  they  had  the  work  before  them,  which 
the  earlier  monks  had  done  elsewhere,  of  removing  the 
forest,  subduing  the  wilderness,  draining  the  marsh, 
planting  the  fields,  and  in  some  way  wresting  from 
reluctant  nature  clothing  and  food.  Gregory  the  Great 
had  said,  five  hundred  years  earlier,  that  to  live  in  in- 
dolence was  to  rest  the  head  on  soft  earth,  not  on  a 
stone,  and  so  to  see  no  angels ;  that  laziness  was  the 
breeder  of  impure  thought ;  and  that  the  active  and  the 
contemplative  life  were  like  the  two  eyes,  needing  to  be 
joined  as  these  are  in  the  face.' 

1  Holtam  habet  locos  ille  amoenitatU,  mnltam  qaod  mentes  fessss 
alleyet,  Inctiuqae  aolyat  anzios,  multum  quod  qoserentes  Dominnin  ad 
deToHonem  accendat,  et  sapeme  dnlcedinis  ad  qoam  saspiramus  admoneat, 
dum  ridenfl  terns  fades  multiplici  odore,  yemanti  pictara  ocrdos  pascit, 
et  soaTeolentem  naribos  spirat  odorem.  —  Deseriptio  ClanB  VaUUt  Optra^ 
ToL  sec,  ooL  2582. 

The  entire  description  from  which  this'sentenoe  Is  ttken,  and  from  which 
the  description  in  the  Lectore  is  compressed,  is  vivid  and  pictoresqne, 
written  with  the  charming  glow  of  a  probably  onconscions  enthusissm. 

*  Sont  namqne  nonnulli,  qni  mondi  qnidem  actiones  fugiont^  sed  nnllis 

15 


226  BERNARD  OF  CUlIBYAUX: 

Certainly  the  aasociates  of  Bernard  had  every  chance 
to  exercise  and  educate  what  Gregory  regarded  as  the 
left  eye.  To  root  out  the  ancient  brushwood,  and  collect 
it  in  bundles  for  burning,  to  extirpate  the  dense  and  stiff 
brambles  and  expose  them  on  favorable  places  to  the 
fires  of  the  sun,  to  eradicate  thorn-bushes,  to  tear  up 
and  destroy  the  shoots  and  suckers  which  hindered  the 
free  growth  of  the  trees  to  be  preserved, — these  were 
always  a  part  of  their  labor,  and  at  first  composed  nearly 
the  whole  of  it^  The  privations  which  they  suffered 
while  performing  such  labor  nearly  pass  the  bounds  of 
belief.  Their  food  in  the  summer  had  been  a  coarse 
bread  of  barley  and  millet,  partially  cooked,  with  a 
relish  of  beech- leaves  steeped  in  water,  and  bits  of  vetch. 
Beech-nuts  and  roots  of  herbs  must  furnish  food  for  the 
winter.^    Salt  wholly  failed;   and  Bernard's  faith  in 

virtutibns  exercentur.  Hi  nimirum  torpore,  non  studio  dormiunt;  et 
idcirco  interna  non  conspiciunt,  qui&  caput  non  in  lapide  aed  in  tena  posn- 
erant.  Quibas  plerumque  contingit,  ut  quanto  securiiiB  ab  externis  action- 
ibus  cessanti  tanto  latitis  in  se  immundfle  oogitationis  stiiepitum  per  otitun 
congerant.  .  .  .  Duse  quippe  vitfe,  activa  videlicet  et  oontemplativa,  emn 
conseiyantur  in  mente,  quaai  duo  ocuU  habentur  in  facie.  Dexter  namquo 
oculus  vita  contemplativa  est,  sinister  activa.  .  .  .  Hoe  itaque  contem- 
plativa  vita  ultra  vires  assumta,  cogit  a  veritate  cadere,  quoe  in  statu  som 
rectitudinis  humiliter  poterat  sola  activa  custodire.  — S.  G&EO.:  Opera, 
Moral.,  lib.  v.,  vi,,  coll.  168,  208. 

^  "  Ramale  vetus  colligere,  et  colligare  fascicnlos  ad  combniendum ;  sqtia- 
lentes  exstirpare  dumoe,  et  solis  aptos  ignibns  aptare,  emderare  aentosv 
evellere,  destruere,  disperdere  spuria  vitulamina,  qus  creacentium  arbcvniii 
vel  ligant  ramos,  vel  radices  suffodiunt,  ne  impediatnr  rigida  quercus  sub- 
lirai  salutare  sidera  vertice,"  etc.  -^  Opera,  IkscripHo,  etc,  voLsee.,  coL 
2529. 

In  the  later  time  when  the  description  was  written  this  labor  is  called 
*'  amcenus  quidem  et  quiete  jocundior ; "  but  at  first  it  must  have  been  as 
tough  and  difficult  as  it  was  constant. 

'  *'  Pulmentaria  asepius  ex  foliis  fagi  conficiebantur.  Panis  instar  prophetici 
illius  exhordeo  et  milio  et  vicia  erat."  It  was  held  almost  for  a  mSraoin 
*  quod  inde  viverent  homines,  et  tales  homines."  (Vita,  L  cap.  6,  ooL 
84ia)    "Tantum  in  primis  qui  ibi  fuerant  congregati,  peasi  sunt  penii* 


IN  HI8  MONASTIC  UFE.  S27 

Ood  found  an  ezpresBion  in  connection  with  this,  which 
was  lovingly  remembered.  He  bade  a  monk  go  on  the 
market-day  and  buy  some  salt,  at  a  village  not  distant, 
admitting  at  the  same  time  that  he  had  no  money  with 
which  to  pay  for  it  To  the  monk's  remonstrance  that 
if  he  went  empty-handed  he  should  return  in  like  con- 
dition, the  abbot  replied,  ^  Be  not  aEraid ;  He  who  has 
the  treasure  will  be  with  thee,  and  will  supply  the 
things  for  which  I  send. "  When  the  incredulous  monk 
returned,  having  obtained  in  an  unfoi'eseen  way  much 
more  than  he  had  gone  for,  Bernard  only  said  to  him, 
^  I  tell  thee,  my  son,  that  nothing  is  so  necessary  to  a 
Christian  man  as  faith.  Have  faith,  and  it  will  be  well 
with  thee  all  the  days  of  thy  life. "  ^  I  do  not  find  that 
in  his  own  life  he  ever  for  long  contradicted  or  forgot 
the  pious  maxim. 

Hie  distress,  however,  returned  and  continued,  be- 
coming if  possible  yet  more  severe;  till,  driven  by 
cold,  hunger,  and  fear,  the  monks  had  almost  deter- 
mined to  give  up  what  seemed  a  hopeless  enterprise, 
and  return  to  Giteaux,  where  at  least  the  means  of 
maintaining  life  could  be  commanded.  Then  Bernard 
kneeled  and  prayed,  till  he  felt  that  a  voice  from 
heaven  had  answered  him ;  and  to  their  question  what 
he  had  prayed  for,  he  simply  answered,  ^^  Remain  as 
you  are,  and  you  shall  know."  Shortly  a  stranger 
coming  to  the  abbey  brought  him  ten  livres,  with  which 
tiiie  immediate  want  was  supplied.  Another,  whose  son 
was  desperately  sick,  brought  him  thirteen  livres,  seek- 

xfaun,  Qt  dims  aorom  eeset  panis,  non  de  ayena  (pretiosum  namqne  tale 
adnHmn  npatarent),  aed  de  mistura  qnalicumqne  molto  viliori,  imo  vilia- 
mnuLj  ntcamqne  eonglobatas  potius  quam  confectua.  Folia  quoqne  ar- 
boiTim  ooota  in  sstate  pro  pulmentis  habebant;  in  hieme  vero,  radices  her* 
Umm."  — Qpmi,  Vito,  iv.  lib.  ii.  coL  2497. 
>  Vita^  ir.  lib.  ii  ooU.  2498-2499. 


228  WBBXfAXD  OF  CLUBTAUX: 

ing  his  sympathy  for  the  lad  The  monks  of  a  nei^- 
boring  convent  heard  of  the  distress,  and  its  abbot  sent 
to  Clairvaux  considerable  supplies.  As  time  adyanced, 
too^  the  ground  began,  howeyer  reluctantly,  to  yield  its 
fruit,  and  absolute  starvation  was  no  more  to  be  appre- 
hended. The  convent  was  fairly  started  on  its  career ; 
and,  as  the  ancient  chronicler  says,  ^God  so  regarded 
them  in  His  mercy  that  nothing  was  wanting  to  them 
either  of  temporal  or  eternal  aid;  according  to  the 
promise  that  they  who  fear  the  Lord  shall  not  want 
any  good  thing. '^ 

In  the  absence  of  the  Bishop  of  Langres,  within  whose 
diocese  the  convent  lay,  Bernard  was  consecrated  abbot^ 
A.  D.  1116,  by  the  Bishop  of  Chftlons-sur-Mame,  better 
known  in  history  as  the  famous  lecturer,  William  of 
Champeaux,  who  became  his  wise  and  ardent  friend, 
and  who,  as  I  said  in  the  preceding  lecture,  ingeniously 
contrived  to  save  his  life  by  withdrawing  him  for  a  year 
from  all  pergonal  care  oi  the  abbey,  and  confining  him 
to  a  hut  beyond  the  enclosure.  He  never  recovered 
from  the  effects  of  his  early  severity  in  self -discipline ; 
but  from  the  time  when  he  left  this  hut  he  was  able, 
largely  through  the  extraordinary  power  which  his 
spirit  exercised  over  his  body,  to  do  his  prodigious  work 
in  the  world.  The  abbey  became  always  larger  in  num- 
bers, wider  in  influence;  ampler  buildings  were  after 
a  time  erected  for  it,  on  a  local  site  better  selected 
than  the  first  had  been ;  colonies  went  from  it  in  lai^ 
numbers,  an  average  of  more  than  four  in  each  year, 
into  different  countries ;  its  fame  for  holiness,  wisdom, 
and  the  highest  exhibition  of  the  virtue  and  grace  of 
monastic  life,  rapidly  filled  Christian  Europe. 

The  rule  of  Benedict  was  strictly   observed   in  it 

1  Vita,  iy.  lib.  u.  ooU.  2499-2501. 


IN  HIS  M0NA8TIG  LIFI.  229 

during  the  lifetime  of  Bernard,  and  as  long  as  his  in- 
finence  remained  dominant  there.  According  to  this, 
the  abbot,  though  elected  by  the  monks,  afterward  rep- 
resented among  them  the  Divine  Master,  and  to  him 
was  to  be  rendered  respect,  veneration,  and  immediate 
obedience.  Among  things  insisted  on,  these  were  promi- 
nent :  no  sensuality,  no  idle  or  jesting  words,  humility, 
patience  under  injuries,  contentment  with  meanest 
goods  or  employments,  constancy  in  religious  service, 
regularity  in  labor.  For  offences,  admonition  was  pro- 
vided ;  for  worse  offences,  chastisement ;  for  the  incor- 
rigible, expulsion.  Of  course  no  personal  property  was 
permitted.  Each  of  the  monks  served  in  his  turn  in 
the  kitchen,  or  at  the  table.  Meals  were  to  be  eaten  in 
silence,  but  acccompanied  with  the  reading  of  Scrip- 
ture. A  spiritual  lecture  was  to  be  given  each  night, 
before  compline;  after  compline,  silence  reigned.  In 
summer,  work  was  required  from  prime  till  ten  o'clock ; 
£rom  ten  to  twelve  readings,  r^ection,  and  perhaps 
rest ;  after  nones,  labor  again  till  even-song.  In  the 
winter  the  hours  differed  somewhat,  and  the  out-door 
work  was  limited  or  suspended ;  but  the  succession  of 
work,  reading,  and  prayer  continued.  Certain  allow- 
ances were  made  for  the  aged;  and  the  use  of  baths, 
with  a  meat  diet,  was  permitted  to  the  sick.  In  Lent 
particular  carefulness  was  enjoined;  and  on  Sundays, 
when  not  engaged  in  the  services  of  the  Church,  all 
were  expected  to  be  occupied  in  reading,  except  the 
illiterate  or  the  weak-minded,  for  whom  other  forms  of 
occupation  were  arranged. 

This  was  practically  the  rule  at  Clairvaux,  as  it  was 
nominally  at  nearly  all  the  monasteries  in  Europe*^    In 

1  S.  p.  Benedict!  Regnla,  cam  Oomm.   PatroL  Lat.,  torn.  Izri.  coU.  21&- 
982.    For  Bernard's  strictneaa  in  obaerying  it  Bee  Opera,  toI.  prim.  ooL  804, 


2S0  BERNARD  OP  CLUBYAUZ  : 

many,  no  doubt,  as  at  the  wealthy  and  f  amoas  Clngni, 
it  had  been  greatly  relaxed;  and  Bernard  wrote  some 
of  his  sharpest  words  in  describing  and  denouncing  the 
luxury  which  had  come  in  place  of  the  early  abstinence 
and  carefulness.  *^It  is  declared,''  he' said,  ^and  verily 
believed,  that  holy  Fathers  instituted  this  way  of  life, 
and  that  in  it  many  have  been  saved ;  the  rigor  of  the 
rule  being  tempered  to  the  weak,  while  the  rule  itself 
has  not  been  subverted.  Far  was  it  from  those  who 
estiablished  it^  as  I  believe,  either  to  command  or  con- 
sent to  so  many  vanities  and  superfluities  as  I  now  see 
in  many  convents.  I  marvel  how  such  intemperance 
has  been  able  to  get  itself  established  among  monks ; 
in  revellings,  garments,  couches,  horse-exercise,  and  the 
construction  of  buildings.  Behold  !  economy  is  now 
held  to  be  avarice ;  sobriety,  austerity ;  and  silence  is 
considered  equivalent  to  sadness.  On  the  other  hand, 
laziness  is  called  discretion,  profusion  liberality,  loqua- 
city affability,  laughter  joyfulness,  softness  of  clothing 
and  trappings  of  horses  are  called  dignity,  the  super- 
fluous carefulness  of  readers  elegance.  •  .  .  Nothing  is 
done  about  the  Scriptures,  nothing  for  the  salvation  of 
souls ;  but  trifles,  and  jests,  and  light  words  are  thrown 
upon  the  air.  At  dinner  the  jaws  are  as  much  occupied 
with  dainties  as  the  ears  are  with  nonsense,  and,  wholly 
intent  upon  eating,  you  know  no  moderation  in  it. 
Dishes  follow  dishes,  and  in  place  of  the  meats  from 
which  abstinence  is  required,  the  great  fishes  are 
doubled  in  number.  When  you  reach  the  second 
course,  after  being  satiated  with  the  firsi^  you  appear 
to  yourselves  to  have  tasted  nothing.     All  things  are 

epist.  cdlzxviii.  [of  Fastredns].  An  ample  analysis  of  the  celebrated  Rule 
is  given  by  Montalembert,  "  Monks  of  the  West,"  toL  iL  pp.  41-63. 
It  has  been  pablished  in  English  and  Latin*  in  London,  1876. 


IN  HIB  MONASTIC  UFI.  281 

prepared  with  such  care  and  artifice  of  cooks,  that  when 
four  or  five  dishes  have  been  disposed  of,  the  first  in  no 
way  interfere  with  the  last,  nor  does  satiety  diminish 
appetite.  .  •  •  Who  can  describe  in  how  many  ways 
the  very  eggs  are  tossed  and  tormented,  with  what 
eager  care  they  are  turned  under  and  over,  made  soft 
and  made  hard,  beaten  up,  fried,  roasted,  stuffed,  now 
served  minced  with  other  things,  and  now  by  themselves ! 
The  very  external  appearance  of  the  things  is  cared  for, 
80  that  the  eye  may  be  charmed  as  well  as  the  palate; 
and  when  the  stomach,  by  frequent  eructation,  shows 
itself  full,  the  curiosity  is  still  not  satisfied.  •  •  •  As 
to  water,  what  can  I  say  when  no  one  takes  water,  even 
mixed  with  wine.  As  soon  as  we  become  monks  we  all 
have  infirm  stomachs,  and  do  not  neglect  the  needed 
injunction  of  the  Apostle  about  taking  wine,  —  only,  I 
know  not  on  what  ground,  omitting  the  ^  little '  which 
his  precept  contains.  Would  that  even  with  this  we 
were  content,  when  the  wine  is  pure  I  It  shames  me  to 
say  it,  but  it  is  a  greater  shame  to  have  it  done ;  and 
if  it  shames  you  to  hear  it,  it  will  not  shame  you  to 
amend  it.  You  may  see  at  one  dinner  three  or  four 
half-filled  cups  carried  about,  of  wines  rather  smelled 
than  tasted,  or  if  tasted  not  fully  drunk,  that  with  quick 
discernment  the  strongest  of  all  may  be  selected.  On 
festival  days  some  monks  are  said  to  observe  the  cus- 
tom of  having  wines  mixed  with  honey,  and'  powdered 
with  dust  of  colored  spices.  Shall  we  say  that  this  is 
done  for  infirmity  of  the  stomach  ?  ...  So  clothing  is 
sought,  not  for  usefulness,  but  with  respect  to  its  fine- 
ness,—  not  to  keep  out  the  cold,  but  to  minister  to 
pride.  .  .  .  Our  customary  dress,  which,  I  say  it  with 
grief,  used  to  be  a  sign  of  humility,  is  worn  by  the 
monks  of  our  time  as  a  sign  of  haughtiness.     We  can 


282  BGBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX  *. 

hardlj  find  in  the  provinces  what  we  will  condescend  to 
wear.  The  soldier  and  the  monk  divide  between  them 
the  same  cloth,  for  hood  and  tmiic ;  and  nobody  in  the 
secular  world,  though  he  were  the  King  himself,  though 
he  were  the  Emperor,  would  disdain  to  be  robed  in  our 
garments,  if  after  the  fashion  proper  to  him  they  were 
fitted  and  prepared.  But  you  say,  perhaps,  that  reli- 
gion is  in  the  heart,  not  in  the  garment.  Very  well ! 
But  .  .  .  out  of  the  treasure  of  the  heart  without  doubt 
proceeds  whatever  shows  itself  in  outward  vice.  A 
vain  heart  gives  the  mark  of  vanity  to  &e  body,  and 
the  exterior  luxury  becomes  the  index  of  the  vainness 
of  the  mind.  Soft  raiment  shows  effeminacy  of  souL 
We  should  not  so  trouble  ourselves  to  ornament  the 
body  unless  the  culture  of  the  spirit  in  virtue  had  first 
been  neglected. "  ^ 

At  the  same  time  that  he  writes  with  such  unspar- 
ing severity,  Bernard  deprecates  any  hostile  or  con^ 
temptuous  spirit  toward  others  on  the  part  of  his  breth- 
ren, and  says,  in  words  very  characteristic:  "  K  there 
be  in  us  a  scornful,  pharisaic  pride  toward  other  men, 
and  we  despise  others  better  than  ourselves,  what  will 
economy  and  severity  in  our  own  way  of  life  profit  us, 
with  our  contrasted  plainness  of  dress,  the  daily  sweat 
of  our  hands  in  labor,  our  practice  of  fasts  and  vigils, 
the  specially  austere  conduct  of  our  life  ?  unless,  per- 
haps, we  do  these  things  to  be  seen  of  men.  But  of 
such  Christ  says,  ^  Yerily,  I  say  unto  you  that  they  shall 
have  their  reward.  *  If  in  this  life  only  we  have  hope 
in  Christ,  are  we  not  of  all  men  most  miserable  7  But 
really  not  even  in  this  life  may  we  hope  in  Christy  if  we 
seek  in  His  service  only  a  temporary  fame.  .  .  .  Could 
not  some  way  be  found  for  us  easier  than  this  to  the  in- 

^  Open»  YoL  prim.,  ApoL  ad  GnOI,  cap.  8-10,  oolL  1284-*1241« 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFB.  888 

femal  world  ?  If  we  must  go  thither,  why,  at  any  rate, 
maj  we  not  choose  that  broad  road  which  leads  to  death, 
and  in  which  multitudes  walk  ? "  ^ 

He  would  never  be  disdainful  toward  others,  this 
devout  and  sympathetic  Bernard,  though  he  so  sharply 
reproved  their  excesses.  He  believed,  as  firmly  as  any 
later  Puritan,  that  ^^the  kingdom  of  God  is  within 
you :  ^  that  is,  as  he  said,  that  it  is  not  in  vestments, 
or  in  foods,  but  in  the  virtues  of  the  inner  man^  and 
that  humbleness  of  mind  in  leathern  garments  is  more 
precious  than  pride  walking  in  tunics.^  But  he  inter- 
preted the  rule  of  Benedict  wisely,  —  indulgently,  even, 
when  any  of  his  monks  were  sick  or  aged ;  with  his  own 
hands  he  ministered  to  them ;  with  thoughtful  care  he 
counselled  for  their  comfort ;  and  by  this,  as  well  as  by 
his  peculiarly  inspiring  mental  force,  his  extraordinary 
positicm  in  the  world,  and  his  holiness  of  life,  he  won 
their  tender  and  reverent  love.  No  such  laxity,  how- 
ever, as  he  had  rebuked  at  Clugni,  had  ever  a  place 
under  his  administration.  He  was  an  abbot  watching 
for  those  committed  to  his  care,  as  one  who  should 
give  account  of  them  unto  God;  and  the  strictness  of 
his  enforcement  of  the  rule  of  the  monastery,  however 
tempered  by  wisdom  and  kindness,  was  firm  and 
steady. 

It  is  a  strange  life  which  thus  comes  before  us,  amid 
tJie  amenities  of  our  modem  society :  hard  and  coarse 
in  many  of  its  aspects,  with  no  delightful  social  refine- 
ments to  relieve  and  adorn  it ;  no  tender  ministries  of 

1  Open,  ToL  pdm.,  Apol.  ad  GniH,  cap.  1,  coU.  1222-1228. 

>  Begnmn  Dei  non  exteriiu  in  Teetimentis  aut  alimentb  oorporia,  sed  in 
Tirtntilras  interioris  hominiB.  .  .  .  Tanicati  et  elati  abhorremns  pellicias  t 
fngwAin  tixm  melior  sit  pellibua  inyolata  liamilitaai  qiuun  tonicata 
anperUa.  — O^Mra»  voL  prim.,  coll.  1281-1282. 


284  BERNABD  OF  GLAmYAtJZ  : 

womanl J  affection ;  no  leap  and  romp  of  chilclren's  feet 
on  nursery  jQoors ;  no  gladness  and  freedom,  and  happy 
incentive  to  all  that  is  best,  in  the  domestic  fireside- 
life.  It  had  immense  moral  dangers  connected  with  it. 
It  wrought,  unquestionably,  enormous  damage  to  the 
spirit  and  even  the  nature  in  many,  who  learned  obe- 
dience rather  than  courage,  who  came  to  value  a  really 
selfish  excitement  of  sensibility  above  intelligent  faith 
and  consecration,  who  above  all  learned  to  distruat 
womanhood,  becoming  at  once  cynical  and  erotic.  We 
see  this  in  history,  as  we  should  have  inferred  it  from 
the  nature  of  man.  Headers  of  ^  Ivanhoe  "  will  remem- 
ber that  it  was  a  monk  of  the  Cistercian  order,  to  which 
Bernard  had  given  the  superb  consecration  of  his  fame, 
whom  Scott  represents,  with  essential  historical  truth, 
as  the  cautious,  elegant,  and  conscienceless  voluptuary, 
Prior  Aymer.  Caution  and  elegance  did  not  always 
attend,  and  thinly  gild,  the  selfishness  of  vice.  The 
Italian  proverb  was  often  vindicated,  that  ^  the  solitary 
man  becomes  either  a  beast  or  an  angel ; "  ^  and  on  the 
earth  beasts  are  produced  more  easily  ihan  angels.  Un- 
natural restraints,  applied  to  multitudes  of  men,  tend 
to  reaction  into  unnatural  excesses;  the  recoil  6i  the 
passions  against  the  sharp  regulation  reminding  one 
of  the  rush  of  a  mob  upon  the  bayonets  which  it  over- 
leaps. I  am  surely  no  advocate  of  monastic  life,  but 
am  heartily  glad  that  it  has  so  largely  disappeared, 
with  the  wastes  which  it  subdued  and  the  forests  which 
it  conquered,  or,  if  any  prefer  the  comparison,  with  the 
quenched  volcanoes  and  the  extinct  mammals  of  an 
earlier  epoch.  But  we  may  not  forget,  what  even  Vol- 
taire did  not  hesitate  to  admit,  that  if  monastic  life 
became  vicious,  the  secular  life  was  often  still  more  so; 

1  **  Uomo  tolitario,  o  bettU  o 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  286 

and  for  any  fair  estimate  of  it  we  must  place  it  in  our 
thoughts  beside  the  fierce  and  turbulent  temper,  pro- 
jected from  preceding  centuries,  which  surrounded  the 
monastery;  tiie  savage  fury,  the  rapacious  and  lustful 
strife,  the  craft  and  chicane,  the  bloody  and  destroying 
ambitions  of  the  age.  ^  So  picturing  it  to  ourselves,  in 
its  relations  and  contrasts,  we  shall  not  wonder  that 
when  ruled  by  a  Bernard  the  abbey  had  in  it  a  strong 
attraction;  that  not  only  the  weak,  the  timid,  or  the 
poor,  but  men  of  the  finest  and  highest  spirit,  the  most 
cultured,  enthusiastic,  and  devout  of  the  time,  were 
drawn  toward  it  with  almost  irresistible  force. 

The  very  unchangeableness  of  the  vows  which  they 
assumed  became  with  most  a  condition  of  peace.  By 
their  own  act  they  had  been  severed  for  life  from  the 
prizes  and  pursuits  of  the  world  at  laige.  In  general, 
therefore,  they  did  not  quarrel  with  their  selected  con- 
dition, any  more  than  a  man  quarrels  with  his  stature 
or  his  complexion,  his  descent  from  certain  parents,  or 
the  loss  of  a  limb.  He  may  regret  whatever  perma- 
nently limits  or  fetters  him,  but  as  far  as  possible  he 
adjusts  his  mind  to  it  Not  a  few  of  the  monks  doubt- 
less r^retted  at  times  their  isolation  from  secular  life ; 
but  as  it  was  a  thing  now  fixed  and  final,  they  ceased 
to  contend  against  what  could  not  be  altered,  and  most 

1  On  lenr  donna  mtaie  aonvent  des  terres  incnltes  qn'ils  d^frich&rent  de 
Umn  mains,  et  qn'tls  firsnt  ensnite  cnltiyer  par  dea  serfs.  lis  form^rent  dea 
booig^es,  das  petites  yiUes  mfime  autonr  de  lenra  monastirea.  Us  ^tndi- 
^vcnt ;  lis  faient  lea  seals  qui  consery&rent  lea  liyres  en  lea  oopiant :  et  enfin, 
dana  oaa  tamps  barbares  oil  las  peoples  ^tsient  si  mis^rables,  c'^tait  nne 
panda  eonaolation  de  titmyer  dans  les  clottres  tma  letraite  assoree  oontra 
U  tyimnnie.  ...  La  fi^rociti  et  la  d^banche,  ranarchie  et  la  paavret^ 
^taient  dana  tone  lea  ^tats.  Jamais  Fignorance  ne  fnt  plna  nniTarsaUa. 
II  ne  se  fesait  ponrtant  pas  moins  de  miracles  qae  dans  d'antrea  tampa.  — > 
Mir  k$  MmuTM,  chaps,  zz.^  xzxTii 


286  BERNARD  OF  CLA.IRYAUX  : 

of  them,  certainly,  obeyed  the  instinct  to  make  the  best 
thing  possible  of  it. 

Then  the  situation  had  always  at  least  this  sovereign 
attraction  to  the  nobler  minds,  that  it  held  before  them 
constantly  the  great  ideal  of  a  life  of  holiness,  in  the 
midst  of  the  tumults  and  confusions  of  the  earth.  The 
impulse  which  led  such  to  join  it  was  in  the  desire  to 
overcome  the  world,  and  to  make  Hiemselves  ready  for 
immortal  experiences.  Their  daily  life  kept  before 
them  the  eternity  for  which  they  were  preparing.  The 
earth  was  to  perish,  and  the  things  of  the  earth  to  be 
burned  and  to  vanish.  But  the  things  which  they  were 
seeking  should  abide,  while  God  lived,  and  while  their 
souls  were  living  before  Him.  A  century  hence,  what 
would  it  matter  to  any  man  whether  he  had  spent  a  few 
years  here  in  a  palace  or  in  a  hut,  had  eaten  dainties 
and  slept  in  state,  or  had  eaten  coarse  food  and  lain  on 
the  hard  pallet  of  the  monk?  But  a  century  hence 
what  an  infinite  difference  whether  he  had  kept  aloof 
from  the  world  and  near  to  Christ,  and  had  sought  after 
God  with  all  his  soul,  or  had  lived  in  a  luxury  which 
had  poisoned  his  spirit,  in  a  selfishness  and  pride  bring- 
ing ultimate  ruin !  The  eternal  world  was  near,  vivid, 
habitually  controlling,  to  monks  like  Bernard ;  and  their 
particular  manner  of  life,  whatever  else  it  did  or  did 
not,  held  them  up  to  the  level  of  this  austere  and  high 
contemplation. 

It  also  gave  sufficient  opportunity  for  high  and  fruit- 
ful meditation,  to  those  prepared  by  nature  and  by 
culture  for  this  benign  exercise ;  and  sometimes,  surely, 
this  blessing  was  a  great  one.  Every  man  must  retire 
at  intervals  within  himself,  in  reflection  and  silence,  to 
do  the  best  things.  As  Bishop  Home  said,  writing  of 
John  the  Baptist,  ^^He  who  desires  to  undertake  the 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFE.  287 

office  of  guiding  others  in  the  ways  of  wisdom  and  holi- 
ness will  best  qualify  himself  for  that  purpose  by  first 
passing  some  time  in  a  state  of  sequestration  from  the 
world ;  where  anxious  cares  and  delusive  pleasures  may 
not  break  in  upon  him,  to  dissipate  his  attention ;  where 
no  sceptical  nor  sectarian  spirit  may  blind  his  under- 
standing, and  nothing  may  obstruct  the  illumination 
from  above ;  .  .  .  where,  in  a  word,  he  may  grow  and 
wax  strong  in  spirit  until  the  day  of  his  showing  unto 
Israel.'*  Bedford  Jail  became  the  fit  cradle  for  <^  Pil- 
grim's Progress."  Milton's  blindness,  which  severed  him 
from  the  world,  unlocked  for  him  the  gates  of  Para- 
dise. The  ^  Saint's  Best "  came  from  a  bed  of  prolonged 
suffering ;  and  Pascal's  ^'  Pens^es  "  were  bom,  we  know, 
of  a  life  of  unrelieved  and  isolating  anguish.  In  the 
woods  at  Northampton,  meditating  beneath  the  silent 
shades,  Edwards  attained  sublimest  thoughts  of  Gk)d  and 
of  His  Kingdom.  In  how  many  chambers  of  scholars, 
in  how  many  schools  of  sacred  learning,  where  outward 
things  for  the  time  at  least  have  been  excluded,  and  no 
echo  has  been  heard  of  the  furious  and  mercenary  rush 
of  society,  have  men  come  to  the  loftiest  efforts  and  suc- 
cesses of  intellectual  and  spiritual  life !  There  philan- 
thropies and  missions  have  been  born ;  there  sublime 
intuitions  of  truth  have  given  new  import  to  the 
Scripture  itself ;  and  there  Immortality  has  become,  to 
the  soul  asserting  kinship  with  God,  a  proximate 
presence. 

So  it  was,  in  its  measure,  in  the  earlier  time.  The 
more  aspiring  and  thoughtful  spirits,  who  rose  nearest 
the  vision  of  things  Divine,  found  freedom  and  opportu* 
nity  in  the  cell  of  the  monk  which  they  never  could  have 
found  in  palaces  of  kings.  Solitude  was  to  them,  as 
Landor  said,  '^the  audience-chamber  of  God."     What 


288  BBBNABD  OF  CLAIBVACX  : 

Lord  Bacon  regarded  as  necessary  to  the  true  advance- 
ment  of  learning  they  certainly  enjoyed :  ^  foundations 
and  buildings,  with  endowments,  and  ordinances  of 
government,  all  tending  to  quietness  and  privateness  of 
life,  and  discharge  of  cares  and  troubles;  much,"  he 
adds,  *^  like  the  stations  which  Virgil  prescribeth  for  the 
hiving  of  bees."^  Certainly  some  honey  was  secreted 
in  those  human  hives,  on  which  the  storm  might  not 
break  too  roughly. 

It  was  while  Anselm  was  lying  on  his  bed  at  the  con- 
vent of  Bee,  meditating  the  question  how  it  could  be  that 
things  past  and  future  might  appear  as  present  to  the 
minds  of  the  prophets,  so  that  they  should  apprehend 
and  declare  them  with  perfect  assurance^  that  he  saw,  or 
seemed  to  himself  to  see,  through  the  intervening  walls, 
the  monks  of  the  oratory  and  the  dormitory,  whose  duty 
it  was,  preparing  the  church  and  the  altar  for  the  matin- 
service,  one  of  them  at  length  ringing  the  bell,  and  at 
the  sound  all  the  brothers  hastening  to  the  service. 
He  marvelled  at  the  vision,  but  instantly  conceived  it  the 
easiest  possible  thing  for  Ood  to  show  coming  things  to 
the  prophets  by  His  Spirit,  since  He  had  enabled  even 
himself  to  look  with  his  own  eyes  through  so  many 
separating  obstacles.'  So,  at  another  time,  when  he 
was  intently  meditating  the  question  how  the  doctrine 
concerning  God,  His  eternity,  omnipresence,  omnipo- 
tence, with  His  holy  character,  can  be  expressed  and 
proved  in  a  brief  form,  and  when  the  question  so  pursued 
him  even  at  worship  that  he  feared  it  as  a  temptation  of 

^  Adrancement  of  Learning,  book  ii.  vol.  ii  pp.  91-9S.  London 
ed.,  1886. 

*  IfiratoB  est  de  re  qun  accident.  Conoepit  ergo  apad  se  Deo  leria- 
ttmam  ease,  prophetia  in  Spiiita  Tentnra  monatrare,  cum  aibi  oonoeaeerit 
quA  fiebant  per  tot  obetacula  corporeis  ocnlia  poase  videre.  —  Eadmkb  : 
Jk  FUa  AnmlmK  lib.  L  n.  &.  D- 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFB.  289 

the  deyily  again  at  night,  in  the  midst  of  the  nocturnal 
vigils,  a  sadden  light  shone  in  his  heart,  the  whole  mat- 
ter opened  itself  to  his  understanding,  and  his  soul  was 
filled  with  an  immense  triumphant  gladness.^ 

These  are  of  coarse  extraordinary  examples;  and 
taken  by  themselves  they  might  seem  to  indicate  some- 
thing extravagant,  even  abnormal,  in  the  intellectual 
state  produced  or  nurtured  in  monastic  life.  But  it  must 
be  remembered  that  that  life  also  had  in  it  much  of  ex- 
ternal labor,  to  medicine  the  mind,  and  largely  to  detain 
it  from  irregular  and  fantastic  states.  The  work  was  of 
various  kinds,  but  always  important.  I  am  not  aware  of 
any  minute  account  of  the  daily  labors  of  the  monks  of 
Glaiiraux.  Doubtless  they  were  too  busy  in  performing 
these  to  take  time  for  recording  them ;  the  very  thought 
of  which,  indeed,  might  have  seemed  to  them  foolish. 
But  we  know  that  the  labors  with  which  they  began,  the 
nature  and  the  stress  of  which  I  have  partly  indicated, 
went  on  also  in  subsequent  years,  though  lightened,  of 
course,  and  becoming  jocund  and  rewarding,  as  the  or- 
chards matured  and  gradually  extended,  as  the  meadows 
laughed  with  ampler  supplies  of  grains  and  grasses,  as 
the  vineyard  yielded  richer  clusters,  and  as  the  har- 
nessed water-power  aided  in  the  work  of  the  tanneries 
and  the  mill. 

But  such  labor  in  the  fields  was  alternated  often, 
probably  always  among  those  adapted  to  gentler  pur- 
suits, by  certain  forms  of  literary  labor,  not  commonly, 
perhaps,  of  the  highest  order,  but  in  their  way  useful 
and    educating.    The    Scriptorium    or    writing-room,' 

1  Eadroer,  lib.  i.  p.  6,  D. 

s  Scriptorium,  CeUs  in  monasteriia  acriptioni  libronim  dertinstA. 
AlcoinoB,  in  locnm  abi  acriptores  sedent,  Poem.  126,  at  apnd  Canifium. 
Dv  Cavob:  OUm,  Man,  Latin.,  torn.  vL  186. 


240  BEBNARD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

before  and  after  the  time  of  Bernard,  was  a  room  accom- 
modating several  persons,  sometimes  many,  while  en- 
gaged in  transcribing  books.  It  seems  not  to  have  been 
usually  warmed  or  artificially  lighted,  for  Maitland 
quotes  a  couplet  attached  to  a  copy  of  Jerome's  ^*  Com- 
mentary on  Daniel,"  in  which  the  scribe  says  of  himself 
that  while  he  wrote  he  froze,  and  that  what  he  could 
not  complete  by  the  light  of  the  sun  he  had  to 
finish  by  the  light  of  moon  and  stars.^  But  the 
necessary  implements  for  writing  were  provided:  ink, 
of  lamp-black  or  the  soot  of  burned  ivory,  mixed  with 
gum  and  diluted  with  acid,  forming  an  ink  more  dura- 
ble than  ours ;  pens,  chalk,  pumice-stone  for  smoothing 
the  parchment,  knives  for  cutting  it,  rules,  compasses 
for  measuring  the  intervals  between  lines,  ink-stands, 
awls,  for  literal "  punctuation ; "  sometimes  styles,  of  iron 
or  bone,  for  writing  on  wax  tablets,  —  as  Anselm,  not 
having  ink  at  hand,  wrote  his  Proslogion  at  first 
on  wax  plates,  which  were  afterward  lost  and  broken.* 
The  cotton  paper  which  came  into  frequent  use  after 
the  tenth  century  came  in  answer  to  a  demand  of  the 
Scriptorium,  as  offering  a  cheap  substitute  for  the  then 
costly  parchment.  Pens  made  from  feathers  had  earlier 
appeared,  though  many  still  preferred  the  calamus,  or 
reed  pen.  The  same  silence  was  to  be  observed  in 
the  writing-room  as  elsewhere  in  the  convent,  and 
diligence  and  patience  in  the  performance  of  the  work 
were  always  required.  Large  gifts  were  bestowed, 
estates  were  sometimes  left,  for  the  maintenance  of  the 
Scriptorium ;  and  no  doubt  the  place  was  dear  to  many, 
who  offered  for  it  the  prayer  which  remains  inscribed  in 

^  Dam  soripeit  frignit,  et  quod  cum  Imnine  solis  scribere  son  potnit, 
perfedt  lamina  noctis.  —  TJu  Dark  Ages,  p.  406.    London  ed.,  1844. 

*  fiadmer,  Yita,  p.  8,  £. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFB.  211 

uncial  letters  on  a  document  of  the  eighth  century: 
*^  Youschafe,  0  Lord,  to  bless  this  Scriptorium  of  Thy 
servants,  and  all  that  dwell  therein ;  that  whatsoever 
sacred  writings  shall  be  here  read  or  written  by  them, 
they  may  receive  with  understanding,  and  bring  the 
same  to  good  effect,  through  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ."  ^ 

The  books  thus  transcribed  or  composed  by  the  monks 
were  also  commonly  bound  by  them,  for  the  most  part  in 
sheepskin  or  pigskin,  but  sometimes  in  wooden  covers 
curiously  carved,  sometimes  in  plates  of  lead,  or,  if 
richer  in  execution  and  of  special  importance,  in  velvet 
ornamented  with  ivory  and  jewels,  or  in  silver  plates, 
further  enriched  with  gold  or  with  relics.  Initial  letters 
were  often  inserted  in  gold,  azure,  or  crimson;  orna- 
mented borders  were  added,  sometimes  elaborate  in  ex- 
ecution ;  and  paintings  not  unf requently  appeared  in  the 
columns,  or  on  separate  pages,  many  of  them  miniatures, 
some  of  them  caricatures.  In  the  National  Library  at 
Paris  are  books  with  thick  covers  of  oak,  plated  with 
gold,  and  set  with  gems,  with  panels  of  gold  represent- 
ing in  hammer-work  the  Crucifixion  and  Resurrection ; 
others,  with  ivory  tablets,  delicately  carved.  One,  at 
Munich,  is  famished  with  gold-bordered  covers,  en- 
riched with  fine  pearls,  on  which  the  Lord  is  represented 
as  holding  the  Gospels  in  one  hand  and  proclaiming 
benediction  in  the  gesture  of  the  other.  Thus  the  gold- 
smith's art  had  frequent  inspiration  in  the  careful  work 
of  the  Scriptorium.  Tradition  says  that  the  nearly  five 
hundred  leaves  of  fine  vellum,  illuminated,  in  the  Brit- 
ish Museum,  represent  the  copy  of  the  Scriptures  given 
by  Alcuin  to  Charlemagne,  the  preparation  of  which  oc- 
cupied twenty  years. 

The  mere  work  of  transcription  thus  accomplished  by 

1  See  ICaitknd,  Daik  Ages,  p.  407. 

IS 


242  BEBNABD   OF  GLAIBVAUX  : 

the  monks  was  immense  in  extent^  and  of  a  really  ines- 
timable value.  Mr.  Hallam  has  truly  said  that  the  most 
important  service  rendered  to  our  times  by  the  Middle- 
Age  monasteries  ^^  was  as  secure  repositories  of  books. 
All  our  manuscripts  have  been  preserved  in  this  man- 
ner, and  could  hardly  have  descended  to  us  by  any 
other  channel ; "  ^  and  Mr.  Lecky,  who  has  certainly  no 
fondness  for  the  monastery,  states  without  hesitation 
that  it  ^^  became  the  one  sphere  of  intellectual  labor,  and 
continued  during  many  centuries  to  occupy  that  posi* 
tion."  ^  Nearly,  if  not  absolutely,  the  only  libraries  in 
Europe,  properly  so  called,  were  then  to  be  found  in  the 
monasteries ;  and  through  them  we  derive  whatever  we 
possess  of  the  rich  and  vast  literature  of  the  world  be- 
fore Christ,  and  of  the  world  as  it  was  around  Him. 
We  do  not  always  remember  as  we  ought  how  deeply 
we  are  indebted  to  the  care  of  monks,  and  to  their  labor 
in  the  silent  Scriptorium  in  those  tempestuous  and  de- 
stroying times,  for  what  they  preserved,  not  only  of  the 
Scriptures,  or  of  the  works  of  the  early  Fathers,  but  of 
even  Gentile  poets  and  orators,  historians  and  philos- 
ophers.^   Perhaps  they  did  not  always  estimate  aright 

1  The  Middle  Ages,  vol.  iii.  p.  292.     London  ed.,  1853. 

•  Hist,  of  European  Morals,  vol.  ii.  p.  212.    New  York  ed.,  1876. 

»  Of  Cassiodorua  (sixth  century),  Mabillon  says  :  — 

Qnamobrem  non  modicis  sumptibus  universa  emit  sanctomm  patmm 
opera,  Cypriani,  Hilarii,  Ambrosii,  Hieronynii,  et  Augustini.  ...  In- 
super  quoscumque  Historiooe,  quod  invenire  potuit,  coUegit,  tractantes 
pnesertim  de  rebus  popnli  Dei,  et  Ecclesise,  ut  sunt  Josephus,  Eusebius, 
Orosius,  Maroellinus,  Prosper ;  libros  item  sanctorum  Hieronymi  et  Gen- 
nadii,  in  quibus  agitur  de  scriptoribns  ecclesiasticis ;  item  Historias  ec- 
clesiasticas  Socratis,  Sozomeni,  et  Teodoreti,  qusB  etiam,  ipso  suadente,  ab 
Epiphanio  Scholastico  Latinfe  versae,  atque  in  unnm  corpus  redactse,  Hia- 
torin,  quam  nunc  tripartitam  dicimus,  nomen  dedere.  Tandem  arbitratua 
est,  operas  pretium  esse  a  monachis  perlegi  libros  de  Cosmographia  ac 
Qeographia  tractantes;  auctores  item  Bhetoricomm,  et  qui  de  Orlliograpliift 


m  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  248 

the  value  of  their  work  in  this  depailment^  as  at  Glugni, 
for  example,  where  it  was  prescribed  as  a  custom  for 
them  when  making  a  sign  for  a  book  which  they  wanted, 
to  scratch  tlie  ear  like  an  itching  dog  if  asking  for  a 
copy  of  some  Gentile  writer,  such  as  Virgil  or  Horace, 
Cicero  or  Plato.^ 

But  whether  fond  of  the  work  or  not  they  did  it,  and 
often  we  know  they  remembered  what  they  wrote,  and 
used  it  freely,  for  illustration,  or  as  furnishing  themes 
for  subsequent  reflection.  John  of  Salisbury,  for  exam- 
ple, in  his  single  book  ^^  Policraticus,  in  Nugis  Gurialium, 
etc.,*'  quotes  Terence,  Juvenal,  Ovid,  Horace,  Persius, 
Cicero,  Plato,  Apuleius,  and  many  others,  —  it  is  said 
by  those  who  have  counted  them,  in  all  more  than  a 
hundred  and  twenty  ancient  authors.^  So  it  is  reported 
that  in  the  ^'  Chronique  d  'Idace,"  a  manuscript  of  the 
eleventh  century,  more  than  two  hundred  verses  are  ex* 
tracted  from  different  classical  authors,  as  Virgil,  Ovid, 
Juvenal,  and  others,  all  being  arranged  in  order,  appar- 
ently for  no  other  purpose  than  to  determine  the  proso- 
dial  quantity.^     The  principle  of   John  of  Salisbury 

scripaere;  istoram  namqae  omniam  lectio  yidebatur  ipei  ad  exactam 
•acne  pagina  intelligentiam  valde  opportana.  Addito,  quod  cum  optaret 
aingalanim  mateiianun  generibus  Bibliothecam  abundare,  rariores  quoque 
ICedidDtt  authores  hinc  inde  selegit,  ut  iis,  ad  quoa  ngrotantiam  cun 
ptrtineret,  inaervirent,  nude  posaent,  agnita  qualitete  morbonim,  corum- 
dam  aaluti  opportune  consulere.  —  Trtust.  de  Stud.  Monad,,  torn.  prim. 
pi  34.     Yenice,  1729. 

*  Pro  generali  algno  libri,  extende  mannm,  et  move  aicut  folium  libii 
moveri  solet.  .  .  .  Pro  algno  libri  aecularis,  quern  aliquia  paganus  fecit, 
pnemiaao  generali  aigno  libri,  adde,  ut  aurem  tangas  cum  digito  aicut  cania 
com  pede  pruriena  solet,  quia  nee  immerito  iufidelea  tali  auimanti  com- 
puantur.  (Consne.  Cluniac. ).  —  MartAnk  :  De  Ant,  Mm.  RU.,  torn.  ir. 
L  T.  c  xriii. 

«  See  edition  published  at  Lyons  A.  D.  1518,  or  at  London  A.  D.  1696. 

*  Foabrooke,  "British  Monachism,"  p.  260. 


244  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX  : 

appears  to  have  commended  iteelf  to  at  least  the  more 
discerning,  that  all  things  are  to  be  read,  some  to  be  rep- 
robated, some  neglected,  some  lightly  glanced  at,  others 
studied,  while  nothing  should  detain  the  mind  upon  it 
which  does  not  tend  to  make  men  better ;  but  from  what- 
ever quarter  truth  may  come  it  is  to  be  accepted  in  itself 
as  incorrupt  and  incorruptible.^  Of  course  the  preju- 
dice against  writers  who  had  known  nothing  of  the  Gros- 
pel  was  often  very  strong.  Alcuin  himself,  of  whom 
Guizot  speaks  with  just  admiration,^  and  who  in  his  own 
works  quotes  Pythagoras,  Aristotle,  Aristippus,  Plato, 
Homer,  Virgil,  Seneca,  Pliny,  is  known  in  his  later  life  to 
have  desired  his  disciples  not  to  read  Virgil,  on  the 
ground  that  the  sacred  poets  were  sufficient  for  them, 
and  they  should  not  be  polluted  with  the  impure  elo- 
quence of  the  great  Mantuan ;  and  one  of  the  abbots  of 
Glugni,  who  had  arranged  a  pleasant  plan  for  reading 
Virgil,  is  related  to  have  dreamed  at  night  of  a  vast 
vase,  of  exquisite  beauty,  filled  with  serpents  which  came 
forth  to  twist  about  him.  He  suspected  that  this  repre- 
sented Virgil  and  his  impure  suggestions,  and  thereafter 
kept  aloof  from  the  secular  poets.^ 

^  De  Nugis  Ourial.,  cap.  iz.,  x. 

'  Hist  de  la  CiriL  en  Fiance,  Le9on  xidi.  torn.  ii.  p.  801 :  "Cest  im 
moine,  nn  diaete,  la  Inmi^re  de  Teliae  contemporaine ;  mais  c'eat  en  mime 
temps  nn  ^radit,  nn  lettri  classiqne.'* 

*  Propoeitnm  illius  fnit,  ut  Virgilii  Maronis  Ubmm  ex  ordtne  lectitaret. 
In  aeonta  nocte  enm  membra  solyeret  in  qnletem,  Tidit  in  visn  ras  grands 
mira  exterios  pnlchritndine  yenostatnm  sed  interius  innnmeris  serpentibos 
nstuantem  ;  qui  prosilientes  ex  Tsiie  ambiebant  enm,  licet  minime  nocnis- 
sent.  Evigilans  vir  beatns,  et  prndenter  considerans  yirionem,  adTertit  in 
serpentibns  figments  poetica,  librnm  Maronis  intelligens  in  yase  iUo,  qnod 
exterins  cirile  facnndia  coloratum,  immandornm  sensnnm  vanitate  interim 
soidesoebat.  Abrennntians  deinoeps  Viigilio  et  pompis  ejns,  et  sno  enbicalo 
poetis  exclnsis,  diyinarum  Bcriptumrnm  paaci  yoluit  veritate.  —  Habtllon: 
Ad.  Sonet,  Ord.  8.  Ben,  ( Vita  8.  OrtUmii),  rol  yii.  p.  187.  Tenetii^ 
1788-40. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  246 

But  many  followed  the  course  recommended  by  Justin 
Martyr,^  by  Clement  of  Alexandria,'  afterward  by 
Augustine,^  who  would  all  have  the  ancient  authors 
read,  on  the  ground  that  whatever  things  have  anywhere 
been  rightly  said  are  the  property  of  Christians. 
Origen's  instruction  to  Gregory  Thaumaturgus,  to  '^  ex- 
tract from  the  philosophy  of  the  Greeks  what  may  serve 
as  a  preparation  for  Christianity,  and  from  geometry 
and  astronomy  what  may  explain  the  sacred  Scrip- 
tures/* ^  and  Basil's  exhortation  to  the  young,  to  treat  the 
ancient  literature  as  bees  treat  flowers,  selecting  those 
suitable  to  their  use  and  passing  by  others,^  were  not 
altogether  forgotten  in  the  Church,  but  still  bore  their  / 

fruit.    Thus  the  abbot  of  a  monastery,  writing  in  the  / 

middle  of  the  twelfth  century,  says,  ^<  The  dishes  pre- 
pared by  Cicero  do  not  form  the  principal  or  first  course 
at  my  table;  but  if  at  any  time,  when  filled  with  better 
food,  anything  of  his  pleases  me,  I  take  it,  as  one  takes 
the  trifles  which  are  set  on  the  table  after  dinner/'  And 
one  writing  the  life  of  Herluin,  an  abbot  of  Bee,  and 
speaking  of  the  numbers  of  learned  men  who  flocked  to 
the  monastery,  expressly  declares  that  ^'  the  fancies  of 
the  poets,  the  wisdom  of  the  philosophers,  and  the  cul- 
ture of  the  liberal  arts  are  greatly  needed  (valde  sunt 
necessaria)  to  the  true  understanding  of  the  holy  Scrip- 
tures." • 

So  it  came  to  pass  that  even  classical  literature  was 
almost  wholly  preserved  for  modern  time  by  the  labor 
of  the  monks.^     How  many  copies  of  ancient  works 

»  Apology,  i.  44.  «  Stromata.  i.  1,  ^  8,  6, 18, 17. 

•  ChriBt  Doct,  ii.  40.  *  Ep.  to  Gregory. 
»  Operm,  torn.  ii.  p.  176.    Paris  ed.,  1722. 

•  See  Maitland,  Dark  Ages,  pp.  176,  178,  note. 
1  Daring  the  short  rale  of  Abbot  Desiderins  at  Monte  GassiDO,  his 

monks  wiott  out  Saint  Austin's  fifty  Homilies,  his  Letters,  his  Conunint 


246  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

there  may  have  been  among  the  more  than  seven  hun- 
dred  manuscript  volumes,  larger  and  smaller,  of  which 
Ingulphus  speaks  (a.d.  1091)  as  destroyed  by  the  fire 
at  the  abbey  of  Croyland, —  together  with  charters  writ- 
ten with  extreme  beauty,  and  adorned  with  golden  crosses 
and  pictures,  as  well  as  a  wonderful  astronomical 
table  of  various  metals,  of  the  rarest  beauty — we  do 
not  know ;  nor  how  many  there  may  have  been  among 
the  seventeen  hundred  manuscript  volumes  said  to  have 
been  in  the  abbey  library  at  Peterborough.  But  cer- 
tainly the  Idyls  of  Theocritus,  the  Fasti  of  Ovid,  the 
poems  of  Yirgil  and  Horace,  the  treatises  of  Cicero,  the 
comedies  of  Terence,  still  shown  in  the  library  of  Monte 
Cassino,  were  copied  by  monks.  So  were  many,  prob- 
ably the  vast  majority,  of  the  nine  thousand  manuscripts 
which  remain  in  the  Laurentian  Library  at  Florence ; 
indeed,  of  all  the  manuscripts  from  the  ten  centuries  be- 
tween the  fifth  and  the  fifteenth,  which  largely  give  to 
the  great  libraries  of  Europe  their  attractiveness  and 
their  fame. 

When  the  Venerable  Bede,  early  in  the  eighth  century, 
studied  the  Latin,  Greek,  and  Hebrew  tongues,  he  must 
have  used  monastic  manuscripts  which  had  been  brought 
to  his  convent  from  Rome ;  and  when  Ordericus  tells  us 

upon  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  npon  Saint  Panl,  and  apon  Geneda; 
parts  of  Saint  Jerome  and  Saint  Ambrose,  part  of  Saint  Bede,  Saint  Leo's 
Sermons,  the  Orations  of  Saint  Gregory  Nazianzen  ;  the  Acts  of  the  Apos- 
tles, the  Epistles,  and  the  Apocalypse ;  rarions  histories,  including  that  of 
Saint  Gregory  of  Tonrs,  and  of  Josephns  on  the  Jewish  War,'  Justinian's 
Institutes,  and  many  ascetic  and  other  works ;  of  the  Classics,  Cieero  de 
Katurft  Deoram,  Terence,  Ovid's  Fasti,  Horace,  and  Virgil.  Marens  Lapi, 
a  Camaldolese,  in  the  fifteenth  centnry,  copied  a  thousand  yolumea  in  less 
than  fifty  years.  Jerome,  a  monk  in  an  Austrian  monastery,  wrote  so 
great  a  number  of  books  that  it  is  said  a  wagon  with  six  horses  would 
scarcely  suffice  to  draw  them.  — J.  H.  Newman:  HisUniad  t9kftfhf9, 
voL  L  p.  418.    London  ed.,  1878. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFE.  247 

of  Lanfranc  that  ^^Athens,  in  its  most  flourishing  state, 
renowned  for  the  excellency  of  its  teaching,  would  have 
honored  him  in  every  branch  of  eloquence  and  disci- 
pline," ^  he  of  whom  Ordericus  wrote  could  only  have  de* 
rived  his  principal  instruments  of  training  and  of  cul- 
ture from  the  libraries  of  the  abbeys  and  the  labors  of 
their  inmates.  I  do  not  think  it  extravagant  to  say  that 
except  for  the  monasteries,  with  the  manuscripts  which 
they  collected  and  the  manuscripts  which  they  copied,  we 
should  now  have  to  regret  the  loss  not  only  of  many 
precious  fragments  of  the  ancient  literature,  but  of 
almost  all  which  it  presents  to  us  of  the  intellectual 
riches  which  were  in  the  world  before  the  Master.  The 
destruction  of  the  convents  would  have  darkened  the 
world  in  later  centuries. 

But  the  service  rendered  by  the  monks  in  the  pres- 
ervation of  the  Scriptures  still  surpassed  in  importance 
and  value  their  service  toward  the  classical  writers. 
One  cannot  think  of  it  without  affectionate  rever- 
ence. Thus  the  third  abbot  of  Giteaux,  Bernard's 
first  convent,  Saint  Etienne,  caused  an  immense  Bible  to 
be  written  in  six  volumes,  and  to  be  collated  with 
Hebrew  manuscripts  by  learned  rabbis.  ^    In  A.  D.  1299 

^  Eecl.  Hist,  lib.  ir.  cap.  7. 

*  MarUne  speaks  of  this  as  still  existing  A.  D.  1709  :  "La  biblioth^ae 
est  an  dessns ;  .  .  .  H  y  a  mi  bon  fond  de  livres  imprimez  sur  tontes  sortes 
de  mati^res,  et  sept  cm  hnit  cens  mannscrits*  dont  la  plApart  sont  des 
oavnges  des  pires  de  I'^^Iise.  Les  pins  considerables  sont  la  bible  en  six 
Tolnmes,  qne  Saint  Etienne  troisi^me  abb^  de  Hteaux  fit  corriger  par  dee 
Rabins,  1e  manascrit  qui  contient  la  r^le  de  Saint  Benolt "  etc,  etc. 
Toy.  Litt,  prim.  par.  p.  221.     Paris,  1717. 

The  same  carefnl  observer  gives  a  mnltitnde  of  other  examples  of  im- 
portant monastic  mannscripts  remaining  to  his  time.  This  is  one  which 
modem  libraries  would  give  much  to  possess:  "J'y  vis  entr'  autres  un 
anden  recneil  dHiomeUes  des  saints  P^res  compiUes  par  ordre  de  I'em- 
f$nai  Charlemagnoy  poor  (tre  l^es  aux  offices  divins  durant  le  coors  de 


248  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUX  : 

a  Bible  in  two  large  folio  volumeB,  with  azmotations,  was 
borrowed  of  a  convent  at  Winchester  by  a  bishop,  who 
gave  bonds  for  returning  it.  Another,  in  twelve  vol- 
umeSy  was  bequeathed  to  a  convent  by  the  Bishop  of 
Cambrai,  A.  d.  1294^  the  monks  engaging  not  to  sell  it, 
or  to  lend  it  without  ample  security.  Wicbert,  bishop  of 
Hildesheim  at  the  end  of  the  ninth  century,  wrote  out  a 
whole  Bible  with  his  own  hand ;  and  Olbert,  abbot  of 
Gembloux,  in  the  early  part  of  the  eleventh  century, 
wrote  another.  One  of  the  successors  of  Wicbert  gave 
two  additional  copies  to  the  abbey-library,  carefully 
elaborated,  with  marginal  glosses.^  It  was  held  that 
every .  monastery  was  weak  and  defenceless  against  the 
world  and  the  devil  which  had  not  in  it  a  complete,  and 
if  possible  a  rich,  copy  of  the  Scriptures. 

Often  copies  remain,  not  only  written  with  cautious 
exactness  and  delicate  care,  but  even  splendidly  oma- 
mented,  as  I  have  said,  not  only  with  rich  colors  in  the 
initials  and  on  the  borders,  but  on  the  outside  with  gold 
and  jewels.  Lacroix  gives  signal  instances  of  these; 
mentioning,  for  example,  a  psalter  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  containing  the  French,  Hebrew,  and  Latin  text, 
in  five  colors,  with  commentaries  added,  a  book  now  in 
the  National  Library  at  Paris ;  mentioning,  also,  books 
covered  with  enamelled  copper,  or  with  carved  ivory,  or 
with  silver  ornamented  with  jewels.  "  All  great  public  col- 
lections," he  says, "  show  with  pride  some  of  these  rare  and 

rann^  6cnt  de  son  tempe  "  (p.  56).  Of  the  collection  of  mannacriptB  at 
Claiiranx,  he  mentions  twenty  important  ones  particularly,  and  says: 
"  II  en  fant  dire  de  mSme  des  oavnges  dogmatiquee  des  p^res,  dont  nous 
en  avons  rt  plusieurs  dans  Clairvaux,  Merits  du  temps  de  Saint  Bernard 
mdme,  et  entr^  antres  les  six  livres  de  Saint  Augnstin  oontre  Jolien.** 

(Page  108.) 

^  For  the  foregoing  particnlars,  and  many  others  similar,  see  Maitland. 
Dark  Ages,  pp.  264,  196,  198,  ei  aeq. 


m  HIS  KONASTIC  LIFE.  249 

Tenerable  bindings,  decorated  with  gold,  silver,  or  copper, 
engraved,  chased,  or  inlaid  with  precious  stones  or 
colored  glass,  with  cameos  or  antique  ivories.''  ^  Some 
of  the  manuscripts  were  written  on  purple  vellum,  and 
either  partly  or  wholly  in  characters  of  gold  or  silver, 
instead  of  ink ;  and  such,  of  course,  were  furnished  with 
the  most  luxurious  covers.  Silvestre  gives  ample  ex- 
amples in  his  *^  Pal^ographie  Universelle."  Louis  the 
B^nnaire  gave  to  a  monastery  at  Soissons,  a.  d.  826,  a 
copy  of  the  Gospels,  written  in  letters  of  gold,  and  bound 
in  plates  of  the  same  metal.  Hincmar,  Archbishop  of 
Bheims,  caused  two  similar  copies  to  be  written  for  his 
church,  also  bound  in  gold  adorned  with  gems. «  A  count 
of  Friuli  bequeathed  to  his  children,  besides  his  copy  of 
the  Bible,  a  Gospel  bound  in  gold,  another  in  silver, 
another  in  ivory.  The  Emperor  Henry  Second,  on  re- 
covering from  illness  at  Monte  Gassino,  prc^^pnted  to  the 
monastery  a  copy  of  the  Gospels  written  in  uncial  char- 
acters, illuminated  as  well  as  bound  withhold,  and  stud- 
ded with  precious  gems.  An  Elector  of  Bavaria  offered 
an  entire  town,  with  its  dependencies,  to  a  convent  in 
exchange  for  a  single  rich  copy  of  the  Gospels,  and  the 
monks  declined  the  offer. '  Such  instances  might,  no 
doubt,  be  indefinitely  multiplied,  if  one  had  means  and 
leisure  to  pursue  the  research;  and  they  show  what 
value  was  put  upon  the  Scriptures  before  the  governing 
C9mrch  authorities  came  to  fear  the  effect  of  their 
general  use,  and  what  kind  of  work  it  was  which  went 
on  in  the  busy  Scriptorium. 

The  fact  that  so  many  manuscript  copies  of  the  Scrip* 
tures  remain,  in  whole  or  in  part,  after  all  the  desola- 

1  ArU  of  the  Middle  Agee,  p.  478.     London  ed.,  1876. 
8  See  Haitland,  Dark  Ages,  pp.  206,  204. 


250  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBVAUX  : 

tions  of  war  and  fire,^  after  binders  had  cut  up  multi' 
tudes  of  parchments  to  be  used  for  covers,  after  tailors 
even  had  employed  them  for  measures,  as  came  near 
being  done,  it  is  said,  with  a  venerable  copj  of  Magna 
Charta  now  in  the  British  Museum,^  and  after  revolu- 
tionarj  sackings  of  the  convents  had  scattered  their 
libraries, — this  shows  how  eager  and  how  constant  was 
the  labor  which  produced  them  in  such  numbers.  One 
of  the  most  careful  and  learned  of  modern  students  of 
the  text  of  the  Scriptures  says,  with  just  emphasis,  ^^  It 
is  very  memorable  that  written  copies  of  the  Greek 
Scriptures,  including  those  of  the  Septuagint  translation 
of  the  Old  Testament,  far  exceed  in  age  and  number 
those  of  all  the  classical  writers  put  together."  ^  This  of 
course  does  not  include  the  vastly  larger  number  of 
manuscripts  of  the  Vulgate,  or  Latin  translation  of  the 
Bible,  of  which  more  copies  remain  than  of  all  other 

^  The  wan  of  the  monks  of  Hildesheim  had  often  to  be  repeated  in  the 
iDonasteriea  :  "Postea  12  Kal.  Febraarii  peccatisagentibuspriQcipaleteni- 
plain  Hildineehemensis  ecclesis  diabolo  insidiante  per  noctem  igne  snocen- 
sam,  sed  solo  dirinn  miserationis  subddio  relociter,  Deo  gratias !  est 
exstinctum.  Sed  hoc,  ah  !  ah  !  nobis  restat  lugendum,  qnia  in  eodem  in- 
cendio  cnm  preciosisslmo  misaali  oraamento  inezplicabilis  et  tnrecuperabilis 
oopia  periit  librornm.    ('*  Annal.  Hildesheini."  an.  1018.) 

<  See  Timbe'  *  *  Curiosities  of  London/'  p.  587,  Art.  <*  British  Museum. " 
A  palmary  instance  of  the  careless  rapacity  of  binders  is  presented  in  the 
fact  that  a  part  of  the  lost  fragment  of  the  famous  Tabula  or  map  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  originally  made  in  the  fourth  century  and  copied  in 
the  thirteenth,  was  found  not  many  years  since  in  the  parchment  cover  of 
a  book  in  the  library  at  Treves,  and  returned  to  its  place  m  the  Imperial 
Library  at  Vienna.  The  portions  still  missing  are  probably  to  be  ac* 
counted  for  in  the  same  way,  and  may  yet  come  to  light.  So  on  a  plate 
of  glass  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  is  shown  a  leaf  of  the  Gospel  of 
Hark,  made  up  of  twenty  or  more  pieces  contained  in  the  binding  of  a 
Tolnme  of  Oregory  Nazianzen,  and  picked  out  A.  D.  1862. 

*  F.  H.  Serirener,  Lecta.  on  Text  of  the  New  Testament,  p.  lU 
CimbridgA  ed.,  1875. 


I 

I 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFE.  251 

early  books  put  together.  Of  the  Greek  Scriptures  alone, 
about  sixty  copies  are  known  to  exist,  written  in  the 
large  uncial  character  of  the  early  centuries,  where  an 
average  of  twelve  letters  filled  a  line,  though  many  of 
these  copies  are  but  in  parts ;  and  of  those  written  in 
the  half-uncial  or  in  the  later  cursive  character,  which 
prevailed  from  the  tenth  century  onward,  more  than  six* 
teen  hundred  are  known  and  catalogued  as  belonging  to 
public  or  private  libraries.  Yet  all  of  those  in  Europe 
are  certainly  not  yet  known,  while  the  Eastern  monas- 
teries, from  which  have  come  most  important  additions 
to  the  list  in  recent  years,  have  been  only  imperfectly 
explored.  These  Middle  Age  manuscripts,  as  Isaac  Tay« 
lor  has  said,  "  were  often  indebted  for  their  preservation, 
in  periods  of  disturbance  and  violence,  to  the  sacredness 
of  the  roofs  under  which  they  were  lodged ; "  while  such 
was  the  durability  of  the  materials  employed,  the  parch- 
ment and  the  ink,  that,  as  he  also  says,  "while  the  mas- 
sive walls  of  the  monasteries  are  often  seen  prostrate, 
and  their  materials  fast  mingling  with  the  soil,  the  man- 
uscripts penned  within  them,  or  perhaps  at  a  time  when 
their  stones  were  yet  in  the  quarry,  are  still  fair  and 
perfect,  and  glitter  with  their  gold  and  silver,  their  ceru- 
lean and  their  cinnabar."  ^ 

^  Transmimion  of  Ancient  Books,  pp.  45,  44.     Liverpool  ed.,  1879. 

The  CiflteTcian  Convents,  of  which  CUlrvauz  was  one,  were  especially 
noted  for  zeal  in  collecting  and  transcribing  manuscripts,  for  which 
Halnllon  gives  the  reason  :  "  Qaod  propria  fundationis  initio  vetemm 
monachoram  consnetndinem  renovare  staduerint,  qnae  in  antiqnaria  arte 
▼enabatur."  Concerning  the  collections  thus  made,  he  adds  :  '*  Plerasqae 
dictarum  cellularum  etiamnum  Cistertii  conspicimus,  in  qnibns  antiqoarii, 
librommqne  oompaginatores  operabantur;  ingensqne  volurolnum  copia,  qua 
ad  h»c  usqne  tempora  in  insignioribns  ejusdem  ordinis  ccenobiis  in  Gallia 
■0nrantnr.  .  .  .  Reperiebantor,  sicnt  etiam  nnnc  temporis  adsnnt,  in  hisoe 
hibliothecis  omnium  libromm  genera,  et  precipue  nniversa  sanctorum 
PatmiD  opera,  tnm  qnis  dogmata  continent,  tarn  que  apeciatim  de  jnorom 


252  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAnX  : 

Nor  was  the  labor  of  the  monks  simply  that  of  traa« 
scription.  They  translated,  edited,  composed  works,  as 
well  as  copied  them.  Many  sermons  and  homilies  were 
of  course  written  by  them,  with  a  multitude  of  annals. 
One  monk  of  St.  Gall,  early  in  the  eleventh  century,  wrote 
a  German  paraphrase  of  the  Psalms.  Another,  at  Bam* 
berg,  who  became  an  abbot,  composed  a  double  para- 
phrase, in  Latin  verse  and  German  prose,  of  Solomon's 
Song.  The  writings  of  the  Pseudo-Dionysius,  which 
came  into  France  early  in  the  ninth  century  as  a  present 
from  the  Greek  Emperor,  were  translated  into  Latin  at 
the  abbey  of  St.  Denis,  and  afterward  retranslated  by 
John  Scotus.  Chrysostom  is  said  to  be  quoted  by  some 
of  the  early  medieval  writers,  though  I  have  not  seen  this. 
Plato  was  certainly  known,  in  a  measure,  through  Boe- 
thius  and  Plotinus.  The  Venerable  Bede,  as  we  know, 
applied  himself  to  every  branch  of  literature  and  science 
then  known,  and  treated  of  history,  astrology,  orth(^ra* 
phy,    rhetoric,  natural    science,  poetry,  and  music,  as 

honestate  pertractfuit. "  Mabillon  recognizes  the  indebtedness  of  letters  and 
of  devotion  to  the  library  gathered  at  Clairvaux  in  Bernard's  time,  and 
closes  thus :  "  Solamqne  poeseos  anthores  ipsis  interdicebantnr,  at  ez  epis- 
tola  15,  prsedicti  Nicolai  Glarsevallensis  colligitur,  ubi  ait, '  Nos  nihil  reci- 
pimns  qnod  metricis  legibus  continetnr.'  "  ('* Tract,  de  Stnd.  Monast," 
torn.  prim.  pp.  85-86. )  Such  an  inreterate  scamp  as  Nicholas  naturally 
preferred  the  Poets  to  the  Fathers  ! 

Entre  les  mannscrits  du  temps  qui  d^corent  la  premiere  de  cesdenz  bib- 
lioth^ues  [Citeanz  and  Clairranx],  on  remarqne  principalement  les  qnatre 
grands  rolumes  de  la  Bible,  revAe  et  corrig^e  sons  la  direction  de  I'Abbi 
8.  Estiene,  comme  U  a  ^t^  dit  aillenrs.  Dans  celle  de  Clairvanz  se  voient 
aasd  plnsieurs  beaux  mannscrits  du  mSme  si^le,  entre  lesqnels  les  plus 
remarqnables  sent  un  Psautier  et  un  D^cret  de  Gratien,  I'un  et  Tautre  en 
beau  velin  in-folio,  Le  Psautier,  dont  les  letres  initiales  de  chaqne  Psanme 
sont  en  or  moulu  d'une  grande  beauts,  est  un  present  fait  k  Clairrauz  par 
Henri,  fils  du  Roi  Louis  le  Gros,  puis  Moine  sous  S.  Bernard,  et  successivie- 
ment  Ev^ue  de  Beaurais  et  Archevdque  de  Reims.  —  HiaL  lAtUraire,  torn, 
iz.  pp.  141-142. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFB.  258 

well  as  of  the  Scriptures.  His  Ecclesiastical  History 
shows  astonishing  learning  for  the  time,  and  Burke's  re- 
mark about  him  is  simply  just,  that  '^  it  is  impossible  to 
refuse  him  the  praise  of  an  incredible  industry  and  a 
generous  thirst  of  knowledge."  ^ 

Indeed  generally,  except  for  the  work  of  the  monkish 
chroniclers,  our  knowledge  would  be  vastly  imperfect 
either  of  French  or  English  history.  Bede,  Ingulphus, 
Matthew  Paris,  William  of  Malmesbury,  and  others  in 
England,  or,  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel,  Raoul 
Glaber,  Odo  of  Yienne,  William  of  Jumidges,  Orderic 
Vitalis,  and  many  more,  trace  for  us  the  early  course  of 
events  with  fond  enthusiasm  and  picturesque  faithful- 
ness, if  sometimes  with  a  readiness  to  accept  the  mar- 
Tellous  in  their  reports  which  belonged  rather  to  their 
times  than  to  ours.  Ordericus  shows  himself  a  culti- 
Tated  man,  as  he  should  have  been,  having  free  access  to 
the  monastery  library  containing  more  than  a  hundred 
and  fifty  manuscript  volumes,  of  ancient  authors,  as  of 
those  more  recent.  He  quotes  Aristotle,  Herodian,  Jose- 
phus,  Philo,  as  well  as  Cicero,  Sallust,  Virgil,  Horace, 
Ovid,  Terence,  and  the  works  of  the  Fathers ;  and  his 
account,  especially  of  the  contemporaneous  relations  be- 
tween Normandy  and  England,  gives  him  high  rank 
among  writers  of  his  time.  The  chronicle  of  Matthew 
Paris,  besides  its  careful  and  graphic  account  of  histori- 
cal events,  contains  reports  of  eclipses,  and  of  remarkable 
astronomical  and  meteorological  phenomena,  which,  as 
his  French  translator  properly  notices,  entitle  him 
to  the  careful  attention  of  modern  physicists.'    The 

>  Works,  Tol.  ▼.  p.  582.  Boston  ed.,  1889.  Ibiqne  yenflTabilem  Bedam 
intaeri  pnbUciim  in  Scholis  Professorem,  cigns  etiam  Alnmni  per  yarias 
OalliB  et  Germanus  proyincias  dispertiti  Aiere.  —  Mabillon  :  TraeL  dt 
Stud,  Monast,,  Pars  prim.  p.  88. 

'  Introd.  it  la  Grande  Chronique,  p.  zliv.    Paris  ed.,  1840. 


254  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIRTAUX  : 

^^  Chronicon  Anglis,"  bj  another  monk  of  St  Albania, 
the  ^^  Chronicon  Anglicanuniy"  from  the  Cistercian  abbej 
of  Coggeshall,  the  ^'  Chronicle  "  of  Roger  of  Hoveden,  the 
^^  Polychronicon  "  of  Banulph  Higden,  with  other  similar 
collections,  have  been  lately  published,  you  know,  by  the 
British  Government  in  recognition  of  their  importance. 

Not  only  annals  engaged  the  attention  of  the  monks. 
The  first  treatise  on  the  Art  of  Poetry  which  appeared 
in  the  French  tongue  was  written  by  a  monk  of  St. 
Genevidve  at  Paris ;  the  only  grammar  of  the  Romance 
language  by  a  monk  of  Einsiedlen.^  Peter  the  Venerable, 
in  Bernard's  time,  wrote  a  treatise  against  the  Jews,  to 
show  the  divinity  of  the  Lord.  He  wrote  another,  in 
four  books,  against  the  Mohammedans;^  and  he  had 
the  Koran  translated  into  Latin,  with  the  aid  of  those 
familiar  with  Arabic,  tliat  the  West  might  understand 
the  formidable  religion  which  was  rising  to  power  in  the 
East.  ^  The  study  of  the  canon-law  became  common, 
especially  after  Qratian,  an  Italian  monk,  had  pub- 
lished, in  the  middle  of  the  twelfth  century,  his  ^^De- 
cretum,"  or  collection  of  canons,  papal  epistles,  and 
sentences  from  the  Fathers,  arranged  in  chapters,  under 
titles. 

1  Mores  Catholici,  vol.  iu.  pp.  288,  278. 

«  Two  of  thwe  hare  disappeared.    The  others  are  in  his  Open,  oolL 

661-720  [Migne  ed.]. 

•  The  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Bernard  on  sending  this  to  him,  hegins 

thus : — 

Mitto  vobis,  charissime,  novam  tranalationcm  nostram,  contra  pessi- 
mam  nequam  Machumet  hseresim  disputantem.  Qii«  nupcr,  dum  in 
Hispaniis  morarer,  meo  studio  de  Arabica  versa  est  in  Latinam.  Feci 
autem  earn  transferri  a  perito  utriusque  lingusB  viro  msgistro  Petro  Tole- 
teno.  Sed  quia  lingua  Latina  non  ei  adeo  faniiliaris,  vel  nota  erat,  ut 
Arabica,  dedi  ei  coadjutorem  doctura  virum  dilectum  filium  et  fratrem 
Petrum  notarium  nostrum,  reverentias  veatne,  nt  sestimo,  bene  cognitnm. 
—  Opera  Pel.  Fen,,  col.  649. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFE.  256 

Inscruction,  too,  was  given  outside  the  abbeys;  as 
Peter  of  Blois  mentions  the  instruction  given  at  Gam- 
bridge  by  teachers  from  Croyland  [a.d.  1109],  who  in- 
structed in  "  philosophical  theorems,  and  other  primitive 
sciences,"  teaching  "grammar  according  to  Priscian 
and  Remigius,  the  logic  of  Aristotle  according  to  the  ^  In- 
troductions,' of  Porphyry  and  Averrhoes  (?),  the  *  Rheto- 
ric* of  Cicero,  and  the  '  Institutes '  of  Quintilian."  In  a 
word,  it  may  be  said,  without  hesitation,  that  it  was  a 
life  of  distinctly  various  study  and  literary  labor  which 
went  on  in  the  monasteries,  whenever  those  of  studious 
taste  and  habits,  as  must  often  have  happened,  found 
themselves  in  these.  The  ages  were  "dark,'*  but  what- 
ever  points  of  light  and  promise  appeared  in  Christen- 
dom were  commonly  in  the  convents ;  and  that  there 
were  more  of  them  than  is  commonly  supposed  is  made 
very  evident  in  the  rich  volumes  of  the  "  Histoire  Litt^ 
raire  de  la  France,"  by  the  Benedictines  of  St.  Maur.  It 
18  never  to  be  forgotten  that  it  was  by  a  secluded  monk, 
Thomas  k  Kempis,  that  that  "  Imitation  of  Christ"  was 
no  doubt  written  which  has  been  translated  into  more 
languages,  more  frequently  reprinted,  more  widely  read, 
than  probably  any  other  book  of  human  authorship,  and 
which  has  certainly  contributed  not  less  largely  than 
any  other  to  the  quickening  and  culture  of  devout 
feeling. 

But  it  was  by  no  means  literary  labor  alone  which  went 
on  in  the  monasteries.  Albertus  Magnus  was  a  monk 
of  the  thirteenth  century,  who  wrote  on  physical  geog- 
raphy, the  physiology  of  plants,  who  was  fascinated  by 
analjrtical  chemistry,  and  who  arranged  a  hot-house  in  his 
convent  at  Cologne.  Vincent,  of  Beauvais,  was  another, 
author  of  the  "Speculum  majus."    Roger  Bacon  was 


256  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

another,  whom  Humboldt  esteemed  '^  the  most  important 
and  influential  man  of  the  Middle  Ages ; ''  ^  bom  too  early, 
no  doubt,  but  great  as  a  linguist,  a  mathematician,  a  scien* 
tifle  discoverer,  who  understood  the  error  of  the  calendar 
and  how  to  rectify  it,  who  was  familiar  with  the  theory  and 
the  practice  of  perspective,  with  the  use  of  concave 
and  convex  lenses,  and  of  the  camera  obscure,  with  the 
theory  of  the  telescope ;  who,  in  fact,  largely  anticipated 
the  philosophy  which  gave  subsequent  renown  to  the 
name  of  Lord  Bacon.  He  was  a  devout  Catholic  and 
monk,  though  his  strange  scientific  discoveries  made 
men  fear  him  as  a  wizard.  On  a  lower  level,  in  humbler 
ways,  many  were  skilful  in  other  arts  than  those  of  the 
copyist.  Thus  at  Evroult,  Ordericus  tells  us  that  one  of 
the  early  abbots  had  a  lively  genius  for  the  arts,  such  as 
sculpture  and  architecture,  while  with  his  own  hands  he 
prepared  wax  tablets  and  other  implements  for  writing ; 
that  one  of  the  monks  was  specially  skilful  in  illumina- 
ting  books,  aa  weU  as  in  copying  and  committing  them 
to  memory;  that  one  superintended  with  success  the 
building  of  the  abbey-church ;  that  another  made  a  shrine 
for  relics,  ornamented  with  silver  and  gold,  and  provided 
much  other  costly  and  elaborate  furniture  for  the  con- 
vent; and  that  another  ornamented  a  book  of  the 
Gospels  with  gold,  silver,  and  precious  stones;  while 
others  were  accomplished  musicians,  composing  anti- 
phons,  as  well  as  singing  with  taste  and  skill.  One,  at 
least,  was  a  famous  physician,  held  in  such  love  and 
honor  by  his  patients  tiiat  rich  gifts  came  to  the  monas- 
tery on  his  account. '  The  monks  of  Glairvaux  had  a 
high  reputation  for  the  beauty  and  richness  of  their  illn- 

^  Cosmos,  vol.  il  p.  619. 

<  £ccl.  Hist  iiL  7,  12 ;  iL  6;  n.  5,  4;  V.  12^  15, 19. 


m  HIS  MONABTIG  UFE.  257 

minated  miBsals,  and  at  least  one  example  remains  of 
iheir  admirable  carvings  in  wood.^ 

The  monks,  too,  gave  lessons  in  agriculture  to  the 
mder  peasantry,  making  their  labor  more  skilful,  its 
results  more  abundant.  Sharon  Turner  has  shown 
from  Domesday  Book  how  superior  was  the  culture  of 
church-lands,  beginning  as  wastes  but  coming  to  have 
less  forest  upon  them  than  other  lands,  and  less  common 
pasture,  with  more  abundant  meadow-land  in  more  nu- 
merous distributions;^  and  the  neighboring  peasants 
could  not  but  learn  new  wisdom  in  regard  to  the  culture 
of  vineyards  and  orchards,  the  better  kinds  of  esculents 
and  grains,  in  regard  indeed  to  the  entire  science  and 
art  of  practical  gardening.  The  most  famous  vineyards 
along  the  Rhine  were  planted  by  monks.  The  choicest 
wines  of  Burgundy  come  to-day  from  grounds  which 

I  Oaiiam's  tribate  to  Fulda  is  not  leas  emphatic  :  — 
(In  the  eighth  century)  Folde  ^tait  Teoole,  non  de  la  Gennanie  senle- 
ment,  mais  de  tout  Tempire  carloyingien.  On  y  professatt,  comme  k 
Saint-Qall,  toutes  les  sdenoes,  tons  les  arts,  tontes  les  indostries  qui  font 
romement  de  la  dvilization.  Pendant  qne  les  d^frichements,  ponss^s  aveo 
▼igaenr,  eclaircissaient  la  forfit  vierge,  et  que  les  belles  fermes  de  I'abbaye 
rMnisaient  en  pratique  les  ingles  de  ragricoltare  romaine,  il  y  avait  des 
fonds  affect^  k  tons  les  onyrages  de  pierre,  de  bois,  et  de  m^tal ;  et  le  tri- 
sorier  veillait  k  ce  qne  les  ateliers  de  sculpture,  de  ciselare,  d'orffiyrerie,  ne 
ftiasent  jamais  vides.  Une  inscription  en  vers,  trac^  sur  la  porte  de  la  saUe 
o4  tntTaiUaient  les  oopistes,  les  ezhortait  k  multiplier  les  livres,  en  prenant 
garde  de  s'attacher  k  des  teztes  corrects,  et  de  ne  pas  les  alt^rer  par  des 
interpolations  frivoles.  .  .  .  Le  moine  Probns  professait  pour  Yirgile  et 
Gicdion  on  cnlte  si  religienx,  qu'on  I'accusait,  en  riant,  de  les  ranger  an 
norabre  des  saints.  On  ^tndiait  I'introdnction  de  Porphyre  anx  Gat^ries 
d'Aristote  avec  tant  d'achameroent,  qn*on  disputait  si  les  genres  et  les 
aspioea  dont  traitait  le  philosophe  ^taient  des  noms  on  des  choses ;  et  les 
controrerses  de  Fulde  remnaient  d^jk  le  probl^roe  qui  devait  mettre  anx 
prises^  pendant  trois  cents  ans,  les  r^alistes  et  lee  nominaux.  —  Ozanam  : 
La  Oiml,  ekrHieMU  efuz  Ub  ^ranes^  pp.  592-698.     Paris  ed.,  1872. 

*  Hist  of  AngIo-8azona»  toI.  iL  p  478,  app.  It.  chap.  2«  London  ed., 
1852. 

17. 


S58  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBVAUX  : 

they  sttbdoed  and  tilled.  Districts  which  had  been 
bleak  and  sterile,  they  changed  not  unfrequently  into 
pleasant  lands  of  com  and  wine,  fruitful  and  glad. 
*  It  is  also  to  be  observed  that  the  monasteries  were 
centres  of  the  distribution  of  charities,  to  a  vast  extent. 
We  do  not  get  the  testimony  to  this  from  modem  Ro- 
man Catholics.  Neander  mentions  the  illustrative  fact 
that  in  the  year  a.  d.  1117,  when  there  was  a  great  famine, 
the  monastery  of  Heisterbach,  near  Cologne,  distributed 
in  one  day  fifteen  hundred  alms,  of  meat,  herbs,  and 
bread.^  But  this  was  by  no  means  an  extraordinary 
example.  At  Bernard's  own  convent,  when  at  a  time  of 
scarcity  in  Burgundy  the  starving  peasantry  flocked  to  it 
in  great  numbers,  not  having  command  of  food  enough 
to  supply  them  all  till  the  harvest  should  come,  he  se- 
lected two  thousand  to  whom  regular  support  should  be 
given,  while  others  received  minor  assistance ;  and  this 
was  continued  for  three  months.'  He  was  not  content 
with  furnishing  such  immediate  assistance,  but,  with  a 
practical  shrewdness  as  marked  as  his  compassion,  he 
counselled  and  directed  his  friend,  the  Count  of  Cham- 
pagne, in  establishing  a  permanent  fund  for  the  benefit 
of  the  poor,  which  should  go  on  increasing  and  supplying 
ever  fresh  means  for  their  relief.^  He  exhorted  others  to 
a  liberality  like  his  own,  and  to  a  bishop  of  Troyes,  who 
in  sickness  had  distributed  all  his  goods  to  the  poor,  he 
wrote  in  terms  of  such  ardent  praise  as  no  genius  or 
wealth  could  have  wrested  from  his  pen.    '^  Above  all 

^  Hist,  of  Church,  vol.  iv.  p.  239,  note. 

'  Opera,  voL  sec.,  Vita,  iv.  lib.  ii.  6,  col.  2501. 

*  Opera  S.  Bern.,  Vita,  L  lib.  it  col.  218S.  Et  immortalia  tempUfandan 
oonsnlait,  et  eleemosynaa  ea  sagacitate  disponere,  at  semper  fhictifi- 
oantes  rediviyis  et  renascentibus  accessionibus  novas  semper  eleemosynaa 
psitorirent. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFB.  259 

royal  treasures/'  he  says,  '^  this  title  [derived  from  a  toU 
untary  poverty]  ennobles  you,  and  makes  you  illustri- 
ous/' ^  Practically,  his  conviction  was  the  same  with  that 
of  Anselm,  that  ^^  the  riches  of  the  world  are  for  the 
common  benefit  of  men,  as  created  by  the  common 
Father  of  all,  and  that  by  natural  law  no  one  has  more 
right  than  another  to  any  possession; "  ^  and  they  both 
acted  on  the  conviction  with  Christian  liberality,  in  their 
dealings  with  the  poor.  Anselm,  at  Bee,  gave  so  freely 
that  he  had  to  exhort  the  monks  to  hope  in  God  for 
what  they  themselves  needed,  who  would  be  sure  to  send 
it  in  some  unexpected  fashion.'  So  one  of  the  abbots  of 
Glugni  broke  up  the  sacred  and  costly  vessels  of  the 
church,  with  beautiful  ornaments  and  golden  crowns 
an  imperial  gift,  to  relieve  the  poor ;  ^  and  many  others, 
in  humbler  manner,  counted  it  their  joy  as  well  as  their 
duty  to  minister  to  the  needy.  Political  economists,  if 
there  had  been  such  in  that  remote  day,  might  have  ob« 
jected,  as  they  now  do,  that  such  vast  help  rendered  to 
the  poor  only  stimulates  mendicancy.  But  it  must  at 
least  be  remembered  that  the  monks  showed  also,  in 
their  own  life,  the  dignity  of  labor ;  and  that  in  those 
harder  times  an  innocent  and  a  helpless  poverty,  oc- 
casioned by  calamities  of  nature  or  of  war,  was  far 
more  frequent  than  with  us. 

But  not  to  the  poor  alone,  to  the  sick  as  well,  the 
monasteries  ministered.  The  writings  of  Hippocrates, 
of  Galen,  or  of  the  Saracenic  physicians  when  trans- 
lated into  Latin,  were  sure  to  be  in  their  libraries,  if  any- 
where.   Whatever  of  botanical  or  chemical  knowledge 

*  Vol.  piim.,  epist  xxiii.  col.  167. 

*  Eadmer,  De  Vita,  p.  8,  £. 

s  Eadmer,  De  Vita,  p.  10 »  C. 

*  Moret  Catholici,  toI.  vii.  p.  358. 


260  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBVAUZ  : 

existed  in  the  world,  however  small  and  insafficienti 
was  also  there  most  frequently  found;  and  thej  who 
possessed  it  were  naturally  called  on  for  the  services 
which  such  knowledge  might  assbt,  not  by  the  poor 
alone,  but  in  castle  and  palace.  William  the  Conqueror 
died,  you  remember,  in  a  Norman  priory,  with  a  bishop 
and  an  abbot  for  his  principal  physicians ;  ^  and  Gois- 
bert,  Prior  of  Maule,  was  peculiarly  famous  and  beloved 
as  a  physician,  among  those  of  high  rank.^  Nor  were 
their  aids  confined  to  those  who  could  reward  them. 
When  the  malignant  erysipelas,  known  as  St.  Anthony's 
fire,  swept  over  parts  of  France  in  the  eleventh  and 
twelfth  centuries,  and  when  the  more  fearful  leprosy  — 
partly  imported,  but  favored  certainly  by  wretched  liv- 
ing, the  want  of  cleanliness,  with  constant  exposure  to 
cold  and  damp  —  came  to  its  terrific  prevalence,  and 
made  each  person  infected  a  moving  centre  for  distrib- 
buting  the  plague,  the  monasteries,  many  of  them,  saw 
their  office  and  effectively  performed  it.  Hospitals  and 
refuges  were  provided  for  the  leprous,  and,  as  Mr.  Lecky 
has  said,  ^^  monks  flocked  in  multitudes  to  serve  in 
them.'*  •  A  Dominican  monk,  quoted  by  Neander,  writ- 
ing a  century  later,  but  writing  what  was  as  really  if  not 
as  extensively  true  of  preceding  times,  says  that  ^'  owing 
to  the  danger  of  infection,  the  impatience  and  ingratitude 
of  the  victims  of  the  disease,  it  was  one  of  the  most  for- 
bidding of  labors  to  wait  on  them.  Among  thousands, 
but  very  few  were  to  be  found  who  could,  be  induced  to 
live  with  them ;  for,  with  many,  nature  herself  revolted 
at  it.  Had  there  not  been  some,"  he  adds,  "  who,  for 
God's  sake,  fought  down  the  repugnance  of  nature,  they 

1  Ordericus,  lib.  vii.  c.  14  [an.  1087]. 

«  Ord.  Vit,  lib.  ▼.  cc  12,  15. 

*  Hist  of  European  Morals,  toI.  iL  pb  00* 


IN  BIB  MONASTIC  LIFE.  261 

would  hare  been  left  absolutely  deprived  of  all  human 
assistance.''  ^  Womeny  as  well  as  men,  took  part  in  the 
service ;  and  the  high-bom  and  delicately  nurtured,  in 
the  indomitable  spirit  of  religious  enthusiasm,  bound  up 
the  offensive  and  dreadful  sores,  and  applied  to  them 
their  poor  emollients. 

It  is  certainly  also  to  the  high  and  permanent  honor  of 
the  monasteries  that  the  first  institutions  in  Christendom 
for  the  remedial  treatment  of  insanity,  and  for  the  pro- 
tection of  those  suffering  from  it,  proceeded  from  them. 
Nearly  five  centuries  ago,  a.  d.  1409,  a  monk  founded  an 
asylum  for  lunatics  in  Valencia ;  others  followed,  in  dif- 
ferent cities  of  Spain,  and  the  oldest  similar  asylum  in 
Borne  was  erected  by  Spaniards,  under  the  impulse  thus 
imparted.'  Pinel,  whose  name  will  have  immortal  re- 
nown for  his  careful  investigation  of  insanity,  and  his 
success  in  the  humane  treatment  of  it,  paid  honorable 
tribute  to  this  work  of  the  monks.  It  is  the  more  note- 
worthy because  insanity  was  so  commonly  regarded  in  the 
Middle  Age  as  a  direct  judgment  of  Gk)d,  if  not  as  repre- 
senting demoniacal  possession. 

Occasionally,  at  least,  the  monks  rescued  and  reformed 
condemned  criminals,  as  Bernard  himself  did  on  one 
memorable  occasion,  when  he  met  a  famous  robber  on 
the  way  to  execution  as  he  himself  was  going  to  visit 
the  Count  of  Champagne.  Seizing  the  halter  by  which 
the  robber  was  being  led  to  his  doom,  he  took  him  with 
him  to  the  count ;  and  when  the  latter  naturally  objected 
to  letting  loose  such  a  reckless  rufiian,  thereby  en- 
dangering the  lives  of  many,  Bernard  promised  that 
whereas  the  man  had  been  condemned  to  the  brief  pun- 
ishment of  an  instantaneous  death  he  would  put  him 

1  Hist  of  Church,  vol.  iy.  p.  267. 

*  Leeky»  Hist  of  Eiuopean  Morals,  rol.  ii  pp.  94-06. 


262  BERNARD  OF  CLAntTAUX: 

under  a  discipline  of  daily  cmcifixion  for  many  years ; 
and  throwing  off  tonic  and  cowl  he  put  them  on  the  rob* 
her,  and  took  him  to  Glairvaux,  making,  as  the  chroni- 
cler says,  a  lamb  out  of  the  wolf,  a  conyerted  man  out  of 
the  robber.  The  man  lived  in  the  monastery  more  tiian 
thirty  years,  justifying  the  name  Gonstantius  which  had 
been  given  him,  by  his  faithfulness  in  service,  and  then, 
as  the  record  says,  ^*  migrated  to  Ood,"  who  had  deigned 
to  snatch  him,  by  the  agency  of  Bernard,  from  the  double 
death  of  body  and  of  soul.  ^  Such  instances  can  hardly 
have  been  common.  No  doubt  the  peculiar  intensity  of 
Bernard's  spirit  gave  him  a  power,  both  of  rescuing  and 
reforming,  which  others  could  not  equal.  But  the  one 
signal  instance  shows  what  others  like  him  might  ao- 
complish,  to  make  the  monastery  a  place  of  resurrection 
for  hopeless  souls.  One  may  well  agree,  too,  with  the  re- 
mark of  Mr.  Hallam,  on  the  right  of  sanctuary  to  accused 
persons  which  the  abbey  churches  maintained,  that  while 
''under  a  due  administration  of  justice  this  privilege 
would  have  been  simply  and  constantly  mischievous,  in 
the  rapine  and  tumult  of  the  Middle  Ages  it  might  as 
often  be  a  shield  to  innocence  as  an  immunity  to  crime. 
We  can  hardly  regret,'*  he  adds, "  in  reflecting  on  the 
desolating  violence  which  prevailed,  that  there  should 
have  been  some  green  spots  in  the  wilderness,  where 
the  feeble  and  the  persecuted  could  find  refuge."' 

It  is  always  to  be  remembered,  also,  that  the  mission- 
ary work  which  distributed  the  Scriptures  in  many  lands, 
and  carried  what  was  then  understood  as  the  Gospel  to 
barbarous  peoples,  had  its  centre  largely  in  the  monas- 
teries. It  was  by  Benedictine  monks,  under  the  lead  of 
the  abbot  Augustin,  that  Christianity  was  brought  to  the 

1  Opera,  vol.  sec.,,  Vita,  i.  lib.  ii.  cap.  15,  coll.  2345-46. 

>  Hist  of  Middle  Ages,  ix.  1 ;  voL  iiL  p.  802.    London  ed.,  lS6a 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFB.  268 

Saxons  in  England,  at  the  end  of  the  sixth  century, 
and  that  the  foundations  were  there  laid  of  those  institu- 
tions, and  the  initial  impulse  was  given  to  that  ennobled 
spiritual  life,  which  are  the  richest  inheritance  to-day  of 
all  the  English  peoples  of  the  world.  More  than  any  ac- 
tual or  possible  foundations  of  custom  or  charter,  the 
two  ancient  copies  of  the  Italic  version  of  the  Gospels, 
written  in  large  uncial  characters,  preserved  one  in  the 
Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford,  the  other  in  the  Library  of 
Ck>rpus  Ghristi  College  at  Cambridge,  and  believed  to  be 
the  very  copies  brought  to  England  from  Gregory  by 
Augustin,  represent  the  basis  of  the  political  and  ethical 
civilization  in  which  the  British  empire,  with  all  its 
colonies,  now  rejoices.  The  same  work  was  carried  on 
more  widely  in  subsequent  centuries;  as  by  Colum- 
ba  at  lona,  evangelizing  the  Picts ;  by  Aidan,  at  Lindis- 
&me,  carrying  the  Gospel  throughout  the  north  of 
England;  by  Boniface  in  Germany,  baptizing,  it' is  said, 
in  twenty  years,  a  hundred  thousand  converts,  and  dying 
at  last,  by  heathen  violence,  with  his  head  pillowed  on  a 
copy  of  the  €k>spels;^  by  Anschar  in  Denmark  and 
Sweden ;  by  Saint  Gall  in  Switzerland.  Not  only  among 
Celts,  Teutons,  and  Scandinavians,  was  the  Gospel  thus 
preached  by  monks.  From  the  Franciscan  monasteries, 
afterwards,  went  missionaries  to  the  Mohammedans,  in 
Africa,  Spain,  Syria,  who  fronted  every  form  of  danger 
and  of  torture,  and  of  horrible  death,  for  the  sake  of 
their  errand ;  and  from  the  Nestorian  seminaries  others 
made  their  way  through  Tartary  and  to  China. 

Not  such  foreign  missions  alone  engaged  the  monks. 

1  A  touching  incident  is  added  by  Ozanam  :  "  AnprU  de  loi  ^tait  an 
livre  matiU  par  le  fer,  tach^  de  sang,  et  qui  semblait  tomb^  de  see  mains. 
II  oontenait  plnsieors  oposcnles  des  P&res,  entre  leaqnels  un  ^rit  de  Saint 
Ambrcriae :  Du  BimtfaU  de  la  moK."  —  La  OMl.  ehez  la  Frama^  torn,  ii 


264  BERNARD    OP  CLAmTAUX: 

They  preached  religion,  as  they  nnderstood  it,  in  its  doc- 
trines and  precepts  and  its  Divine  promises,  in  their 
own  neighborhoods  and  countries.  The  order  of  Pre> 
monstrants,  founded  by  Norbert  at  Pr^montr^  in  a.  d. 
1121,  and  which  came  to  have  a  thousand  monasteries, 
with  five  hundred  nunneries,  was  especially  established 
to  unite  preaching  and  the  cure  of  souls  with  the  regular 
monastic  duties ;  and  the  mendicant  orders,  having  no 
abbeys,  but  going  everywhere  to  teach  and  preach,  were 
for  scores  of  years  a  great  power  for  good  in  Christen- 
dom.^ Even  Wyckliff  thought  well  of  them  till  his  ad- 
vancing doctrinal  views  brought  him  to  sharp  collision 
with  their  teaching. 

I  may  not  weary  your  attention  with  other  particulars, 
showing  the  variety,  and  the  frequently  signal  benefi- 
cence, of  the  work  which  went  on  in  and  around  the 
better  class  of  the  mediaeval  monasteries.  My  aim  has 
not  been  to  set  this  at  large  and  fuUy  before  you,  for 
which  volumes  would  be  needed,  but  only  to  indicate 
some  of  the  facts  which  made  monastic  life,  as  it  was  at 
that  time,  peculiarly  attractive  to  Bernard,  and  to  others 
of  his  temper,  as  well  as  to  multitudes  of  humbler  and 
ruder  men.  I  have  done  this  at  greater  length  because 
the  modem  conception  of  ancient  monasteries  is  often 
obscure,  or  essentially  grotesque,  making  it  difficult  to 
associate  with  them  one  like  Bernard.  It  is  important 
to  remember,  therefore,  that  the  convent  life  was  not 
one  of  indolence ;  while  the  monk  was  subject  to  a  rule 
of  which  even  so  cautious  and  confirmed  a  Protestant  as 
Ouizot  has  said  that  it  made  life  humane  and  moderate, 
more  so  than  either  the  laws  or  customs  prevailing  out- 
side ;  that  "  they  were  governed  by  an  authority,  take  it 
altogether,  more  reasonable,  and  exercised  in  a  manner 

^  See  Keander,  Hist  of  Chuzch,  voL  ir.  pp.  S76-i79. 


IN  HTB  MONASTIC  UFE.  266 

leas  seyere,  than  they  would  have  found  in  civil  soci- 
ety." ^  The  strongest  personal  attachments  often  grew 
up  among  them,  as  of  Anselm  to  Osbem,  whom  he  be- 
sought to  appear  to  him  after  death  if  it  were  possible, 
whom  he  thought  that  he  had  thus  seen,  and  of  whom 
he  wrote  to  his  friends  that  the  soul  of  Osbem  was  as 
his  own,  and  that  if  thej  loved  him,  they  must  never 
forget  his  friend ;  ^  as  of  Adelmann  to  Berengar,  which 
survived  years  and  sharp  doctrinal  differences,  and  re- 
called still  the  delightful  conversations  which  they  had 
had  in  youth,  when  walking  in  the  garden  at  eventide 
with  their  teacher,  who  spoke  to  them  of  the  heavenly 
country.^  A  practical  democracy  existed  in  the  monas- 
teries, where  all  the  monks  elected  the  abbot  whom  they 
were  afterward  to  obey,  and  where  the  distinctions  of 
rank  prevailing  in  the  world  had  entirely  disappeared, 
noble  and  vassal  working  together,  the  count  and  the 
ploughman  side  by  side.  This  was  a  fact  fruitful  of 
consequences.  8uch  an  established,  organized,  Christian 
Socialism  had  to  do  with  all  history.  When  men  were 
confessedly  equal  before  €k>d,  it  was  not  surprising  that 
after  a  time  a  larger  measure  of  equality  should  be  se- 
cured before  the  Law,  or  even  that  the  great  instrument 
of  Magna  Charta,  with  its  careful  and  controlling  de- 
fences of  liberty,  should  have  had  for  its  first  witness 
Stephen  Langton,  the  illustrious  archbishop.^ 

^  CiYil.  en  France,  legon  xiy.  torn,  i  p.  894.    Paris  ed.,  1846. 

*  Eodmer,  De  Vita,  4,  c  D. ;  epist.  Anaelmi,  ▼.  vii.  et  oL 

*  Neander,  Hist,  of  Ghnroh,  yoL  ilL  pp.  601^-508. 

*  While  the  firat  caie  was  to  secuie  the  liberty  of  the  Chnroh  in  ICagna 
Charta,  with  the  priyilegea  of  the  Barons,  it  is  erident  that  the  welfare  of 
all  clasBOfl  was  regarded,  no  distinction  being  made  in  this  respect  between 
Konnan  and  Saxon,  baron,  fireeholder,  merchant,  townsman;  eyen  the  Til- 
lain  baring  recognition. 

Qoare  Tolnnuu  et  fixmiter  prmslpimnfl,  quod  AiigHi*^i>^  Eodeiia  libera 


266  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUZ  : 

When  the  monk  was  sick,  too,  special  arrangements 
were  made  for  his  comfort ;  and  when  he  was  old,  as 
appears  for  example  from  lugulphus'  account  of  Croy- 
land,  a  chamber  was  assigned  him  in  the  infirmary,  with 
a  servant  to  wait  on  him,  and  a  companion  daily  ap- 
pointed. He  could  go  in  and  out  at  his  pleasure; 
nothing  unpleasant  in  the  monastery  was  to  be  talked  of 
before  him;  and  the  general  rule  was  that  ^^ nobody 
shall  vex  him  about  anything,  but  in  perfect  peace  and 
quietness  of  mind  he  shall  wait  for  his  end."  ^ 

I  submit  that  it  need  occasion  no  wonder  that  men 
loTed  their  monasteries,  in  those  wild  and  fierce  ages, 
with  a  quite  peculiar  fondness  of  affection ;  that  they 
sought  them  eagerly,  were  most  unwilling  to  leave  them. 
Thus  a  young  novice  wrote  from  Clairvaux,  with  an  en- 
thusiasm which  we  cannot,  I  think,  wholly  fail  to  under- 
stand :  ^^  Although,  so  far  as  location  is  concerned,  it  is 
situated  in  a  valley,  its  foundations  are  on  the  holy 
mountains,  which  the  Lord  loveth  more  than  all  the 
dwellings  of  Jacob.  Glorious  things  are  spoken  of  it, 
because  in  it  the  glorious  and  wonderful  Ood  works 
glorious  wonders.  There  those  long  insane  return  to 
reason,  and  though  the  outer  man  perishes,  the  inner  is 
renewed.  There  the  proud  are  humbled,  and  the  rich 
become  poor ;  there  the  poor  hear  the  Gospel,  and  the 
gloom  of  the  sinful  is  changed  into  light.  To  this  house 
a  great  multitude  of  the  blessed  poor  come  from  the  ends 
of  the  earth,  assembled  from  different  regions  and  peo- 
ples ;  yet  have  they  one  spirit  and  one  mind.    They  have 

sit,  et  quod  omnes  homines  de  regno  noetic  habeant  et  teneint  onmes 
libertates  pnefatae,  jura,  et  consnetadinee  bene  et  in  pace,  libere  et  qniete, 
plene  et  integre,  eibi  et  bsredibns  snis,  de  nobis  et  bsredibna  noatris,  in 
omnibua  rebns  et  loois,  in  perpetnnm,  nt  pnedictam  eat.  —  Mag.  CkarL^ 
oap.  62. 

^  Ghronide  of  Croydon^  ▲.  D.  974 ;  **  Decieei  of  TnrketuL" 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  267 

found  at  Clairvaux  the  ladder  of  Jacob,  with  angels 
on  it,  some  descending  to  provide  for  their  bodies  that 
they  faint  not  hj  the  way;  some  ascending,  who  so 
guide  their  souls  that  hereafter  even  their  bodies  shall 
be  glorified  with  these.  The  more  attentively  I  watch 
from  day  to  day  these  so  poor  in  their  happy  life,  the 
more  fully  do  I  believe  them  to  follow  Christ  in  all 
things,  and  to  show  themselves  true  ministers  of  God. 
While  I  watch  them  at  the  daily  services,  and  in  the 
nightly  vigils  from  before  midnight  until  the  dawn,  with 
brief  interval,  so  holily  and  unweariedly  singing,  they 
seem  to  me  little  less  than  angels,  much  more  than 
men.  Some  of  them  I  understand  to  have  been  bishops, 
others  counts,  or  men  eminent  by  other  dignities  and  by 
great  knowledge;  some  have  been  illustrious  youth; 
but  now,  by  the  grace  of  God,  all  acceptation  of  persons 
being  dead  among  them,  by  as  much  as  any  one  has 
thought  himself  higher  in  the  world,  by  so  much  does 
He  hold  himself  less  than  the  least  in  this  flock,  and  in 
all  things  more  lowly.  I  see  them  in  the  gardens  with 
the  hoe,  in  the  meadows  with  fork  and  rake,  in  the 
fields  with  the  sickle,  in  the  forest  with  the  axe,  in  other 
places  of  labor  with  other  implements,  and  while  I  re- 
member what  they  have  been  and  consider  their  pres* 
ent  station,  work,  instruments,  their  mean  and  ill-made 
clothes,  though  to  the  outward  eye  they  may  seem  not 
so  much  men  as  a  stupid  class,  mute  and  speechless,  the 
sound  and  trustworthy  discernment  of  my  heart  assures 
me  that  their  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  the  heavens." 
One  is  not  surprised  that  he  closes  his  long  letter  with 
saying,  ^^ Farewell!  God  willing,  on  the  next  Sunday 
after  Ascension  Day  1  shall  put  on  the  armor  of  my 
profession  as  a  monk."^ 

^  Open  S.  Bern.  ?oI  prim.,  epint.  odlxxix.  from  Peter  de  Boya,  Novice^ 
ooll.  806-818. 


268  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAtJZ  : 

Bernard  himself  always  left  his  abbey  with  sore 
gret,  and  only  as  pulled  away  from  it  by  imperious  exi- 
gencies of  public  affairs.  He  thought  of  it  in  his  absence 
with  anxious  affection  and  eager  desire,  and  returned  to 
it,  from  whatever  scenes  of  honor  and  applause,  with  the 
deepest  delight.  It  was  to  him  the  ^^  beloved  Jerusa- 
lem." After  cities  like  Milan  had  almost  fought  to  make 
him  their  archbishop ;  after  stubborn  princes  had  been 
smitten  before  him  into  prostrate  submission;  after 
cardinals  had  hated  him  because  his  power  with  the 
Pontiff  surpassed  their  own ;  after  miracles,  even,  in  long 
series,  had  seemed  to  attend  his  triumphing  steps, — he 
came  back,  not  merely  to  preach  daily  sermons  to  the 
monks,  but  to  take  his  part  in  preparing  dinners  and 
washing  the  kitchen  plates  and  vessels,  to  look  after  the 
poultry,  to  number  the  pigs,  and  to  grease  his  own 
shoes.^  The  greatest  difficulty  which  he  met  in  send- 
ing colonies  from  Clairvaux  came  from  the  reluctance  of 
monks  to  leave  it.    From  more  fertile  valleys,  and  more 

^  Qao  nimiram  intuitu  vitam  regulamque  communem  amplios  smola- 
batur,  nil  in  suis  actibus  pneferens  obserrantiiB  singularia.  .  •  •  Sic  autem 
fnit  ab  initio  spiritu  validus,  corpore  infiimus ;  nU  tamen  indnlgentiiB 
circa  corporis  quietem  aeu  refectionem,  nU  remissionis  de  comrauni  labors 
vel  opere  fieri  sibi  aliquando  acquiesoens.  .  .  .  Ubi  yero  Tires  deficiebant» 
ad  viliora  qusque  opera  confugiens,  laborem  humilitate  recompenaabat 
—  FUa,  ii.  cap.  10,  vol.  sec  colL  2426-27. 

Beatns  Bemardus  cum  esset  die  quadam  in  oella  sua  cum  paucis  dia* 
cipnlis,  et  ungeret  aandalia  sua  Mcnndum  oonsaetudinem  suam,  apparuit 
ei  diabolus  in  similitudinem  monacbi  nigri,  dicens  ei:  "  Abba,  quomodo  te 
babes  f  Ego  de  longinqnis  terns  veni  ut  te  yiderem,  et  te  calceos  ungentem 
inrenio."  Cui  respondit  vir  Dei :  "  Ego  ssnros  non  babeo,  nee  volui  un- 
quam  habere.  .  .  .  Imitando  igitur  Dominum  meum,  yilia  et  servQia 
opera  pro  amore  ipsins  ezsequi  non  tantum  non  gravat,  sed  et  plurimum 
delectat"  —  Fita,  iv.  lib.  2,  16,  col.  2608. 

His  rebuke  to  the  monk  who  neglected  to  wash  the  pots  in  the  kitchen 
when  his  weekly  turn  came  i»  in  the  same  column  :  "  Fili,  adeo  n< 
«%  nbi  nugorem  deberss  habere  diligentiam." 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFB.  9M 

genial  skies,  they  incessantly  longed  to  get  back  thither ; 
and  one  of  his  severest  letters  was  written  from  Italy  to 
a  poor  disciple  who  had  been  sent  as  abbot  to  the  con- 
vent at  IgDjf  but  who  was  so  homesick  for  Clairvaux  that 
he  gave  up  his  place  of  honor  and  trust  to  return  where 
his  heart  was.  ^  The  Almighty  God  spare  thee ! "  says 
Bernard.  ^^  What  is  this  that  thou  art  set  upon  doing  ? 
Who  would  have  believed  that  thou  wouldst  have  rushed 
into  this  great  wrong,  a  man  endowed  with  so  much 
goodness !  How  is  it  that  a  good  tree  brings  forth  from 
itself  such  detestable  fruit?"  He  beseeches  him,  by 
Him  who  was  crucified  for  him,  to  return  to  his  work, 
and  not  add  sadness  upon  sadness  to  one  who  already 
has  enough  on  his  heart.^  The  rebuked  Humbert 
was  not  alone  in  his  sense  of  exile.  Eugenius  Third, 
who  had  been  a  monk  in  the  beautiful  valley,  went  from 
it  with  tears  to  assume  the  duties  and  the  dignities  of  the 
pontificate  at  Bome.^ 

Of  course  a  monastery  so  helpful  and  so  beloved  con- 
tinually increased  in  numbers  and  in  fame.  Eager 
applicants  for  admission  flocked  to  it  from  all  quarters, 
a  hundred  at  a  time,  and  it  became  necessary  to  rebuild 
it  on  a  much  larger  scale.'     Before  the  representations 

1  Epiflt.  czli.  ad  Hambertam,  toI.  prim.  ool.  850. 

*  AUoqnitar  fratres  non  dne  lacrymis,  miBcens  aermonilms  avuUa  a 
oorde  suspiria,  hortatar  et  oonsolator,  et  se  inter  eos  fratrem  et  sociuni, 
non  dominam  ezliibet,  yel  magirtrom.    Vol.  sec.,  Vita,  i.  lib.  ii  col.  SI 82. 

*  Opera,  roL  sec,  Vita,  L  lib.  iL  col.  2165. 

Dana  la  premiere  claaae  [of  the  inspiring  heads  of  monastic  orders]  se 
lioaye  Tillostre  8.  Bernard,  dont  I'ezemple  ponyoit  seal  saffire  k  faire 
aimer  tontes  les  sciences  ecd^siastiques,  et  seryir  de  modMe  k  les  porter  i 

k  nn  certain  point  de  perfection.  II  ^toit  effectiyement,  comme  tout  le 
monde  s^ait,  Oratenr,  Th^ologien,  Canoniste,  et  I'homme  de  son  siMe  qui 
poiB^dAt  mieoz  TEcritare,  et  les  P^res  de  I'^lise,  sartont  S.  Augnstin, 
et  qui  i&t  pins  instniit  des  r^les  de  la  Morale.    A  S.  Bernard  on  ponrroit  j 

i 


2T0  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAnz: 

made  to  him  to  this  effect,  Bernard  hesitated  long,  bat 
at  last  he  yielded,  and  the  work  was  soon  done.  Spon- 
taneous contributions  flowed  in  abundantly,  from  the 
Count  of  Champagne,  from  the  bishops  around,  from 
distinguished  persons,  and  from  merchants ;  the  brother 
monks  engaged  in  the  work  with  joyful  alacrity,  cutting 
the  logs,  quarrying  and  squaring  the  stone  and  building 
it  into  walls,  separating  the  stream  into  runlets  by 
canals,  until  the  work  was  finished,  and,  as  the  chronicler 
says,  ^^  the  house  arose,  and  the  church,  lately  born,  as  if 
it  had  had  a  living  and  a  moving  soul,  grew  shortly  to  its 
completeness."  ^  It  was  a  beautiful  scene  which  then  was 
presented,  with  the  grand  pile  of  the  abbey  and  its  large 
subordinate  buildings,  overlooking  a  landscape  of  rich 
and  various  pastoral  beauty,  all  protected  by  an  authority 
greater  than  any  which  arms  could  offer;  to  those 
who  dwelt  in  it  a  home  of  sacred  pleasure  and  peace. 
Many  colonies  went  from  it,  a  hundred  and  sixty  in 
Bernard's  own  life.  The  ^  Fountains'  Abbey,"  so  called, 
in  Yorkshire,  England,  whose  remains  in  their  vener- 
able beauty,  with  the  ancient  yew-trees  and  the  admirable 
site,  still  attract  travellers,  was  one  of  these  offshoots. 
It  is  at  least  not  impossible  that  the  name  ''  Fontaines' 
Abbey  "  should  rather  be  given  it,  not  so  much  for  the 
springs  on  the  spot,  as  in  affectionate  remembrance 

joindre  qaelquei-ons  des  plus  c^l^bies  ficriyains,  entre  cette  maltltade  que 
produisit  duiB  le  coun  de  ce  si^Ie  TOrdre  de  Cisteaux."  Among  these 
are  mentioned  Conrad,  son  of  the  Duke  of  Bavaria ;  Estienne,  a  renowned 
teacher  in  France ;  Alexandre,  a  famous  Doctor  of  Cologne,  afterward  ab- 
bot of  Clairyanx  ;  Hugh,  snmamed  de  Flavigni.  And  the  historian  adds : 
"  Mais  ils  sufl&sent  pour  faire  juger,  que  s'il  ^toit  possible  de  recneillir  tous 
les  antrea  qui  lea  imit^rent,  soit  en  choisissant  la  mfime  solitude,  oa  les 
autrea  Maisons  de  TOrdre,  le  nombre  en  seroit  prodigieux."  Hist.  Litter, 
torn.  ix.  pp.  122-128.     Paris  ed.,  1750. 

^  Opera,  vol.  sec.,  Vita,  i.  lib.  ii.  colL  2165-66. 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  UFB.  271 

of  the  birth-plaoe  of  Bernard.^  Others  were  in  Spain, 
Holland,  Ireland,  Grermany,  Saxony,  Hungary,  Sweden, 
Denmark,  as  well  as  in  France.  In  the  end  there  are 
said  to  have  been  eight  hundred  abbeys  thus  affiliated 
with  Clairraux,  and  adopting  from  it  the  rule  of  Citeaux. 
The  mighty  impulse  to  such  rapid  multiplication  of  the 
associated  institutions  came  from  Bernard,  while  his 
own  monastery  had  within  it  at  his  death  seven  hundred 
monks. 

Almost  better  than  any  other  he  exemplified  whatever 
was  morally  fruitful  in  the  monastic  life,  and  overcame 
the  dangers  incident  to  it.  To  the  laziness  and  the  lust 
by  which  its  rules  were  sometimes  broken,  in  after  years 
with  increasing  frequency,  we  cannot  even  conceive  him 
tempted.  It  were  as  easy  to  think  of  bloody  blotches 
on  the  sunshine.  Even  the  more  impalpable  dangers, 
against  which  the  wise  had  to  be  on  their  guard,  seem 
not  to  have  touched  him.  That  there  were  such  we 
abundantly  know.  Ambition  for  individual  distinction 
was  as  easy  to  monks  as  to  soldiers  or  statesmen. 
A  certain  cynical  spiritual  pride  was  sometimes  fostered 
by  their  recluse  life.     A  wild  enthusiasm,  alternating 

^  The  taU  tower,  looking  at  a  little  distance  as  if  belonging  to  a  cathe* 
dnl,  is  still  in  good  preservationy  bat  as  yon  come  nearer  you  find  that  all 
the  rest  of  the  spaeioos  chorch  is  a  mass  of  most  picturesqae  rain,  with 
luge  trees  growing  in  the  nave,  and  ivy  and  wild  flowers  festooning  the 
old  Norman  pillars  and  the  beantifal  lancet-shaped  windows.  The  clois- 
tot  are  very  eztensiye,  and  still  preserve  their  roofs,  so  that  yon  walk 
tiiroogh  their  whole  range  and  look  out  through  the  windows  at  a  beaatiful 
0tnam  which  murmurs  along  among  the  ruins,  and  at  twilight  or  moon- 
light it  would  not  require  a  violent  imagination  to  picture  the  forms  of 
liooded  monks  stalking  through  the  cloisters,  or  to  hear  a  midnight  mass 
pealing  from  the  ruined  choir  of  the  beautiful  chapel.  ...  I  shall  say 
nothing  farther  of  this  exquisite  ruin,  save  to  repeat  that  it  is  far  the  most 
impressive  one  that  I  have  ever  seen,  and  much  mora  beautiful  than  Mel- 
fDte  Abbey.  —  OomtpofuUnee  of  J.  L,  MoUey,  vol.  i.  p.  S50. 


272  BERNABD  OF  CLAIBTAUX: 

dismal  sceptical  doubts,  by  turns  excited  and  manacled 
the  spirit ;  and  utter  despair  was  not  unfrequently  the 
natural  effect  of  mental  reaction  against  their  limitations, 
and  of  excessive  self-contemplation.  Always,  of  course, 
there  was  danger  of  that  hypocritical  temper  which  pre* 
tends  to  an  unreal  sanctity,  and  to  which  the  abbey 
offered  dangerous  encouragement ;  while  envies,  jealous- 
ies, suspicions,  animosities,  sometimes  fierce  and  fatal 
hatreds,  were  by  no  means  excluded  from  the  monaa^ 
tery  grounds,  but  grew  there  sometimes  the  more  rankly 
because  men  had  to  dwell  together  in  a  confined, 
inelastic  companionship. 

A  text  which  has  been  occasionally  quoted,  as  inter- 
preting and  justifying  tiie  impulse  to  monachism,  is 
found  in  the  first  verse  of  the  eighteentii  chapter  of 
Proverbs,  which  has  been  tiius  read :  ^^  Through  desire  a 
man  having  separated  himself  seeketh  and  intermeddleth 
with  all  wisdom."  Unfortunately,  the  better  translation 
is  found  to  be :  ^^  He  that  separateth  himself  seekefh  his 
own  desire,  and  rageth  against  all  wise  counsel."  This 
was  as  true  in  the  twelfth  Christian  century  as  it  had 
been  when  written ;  and  one  studying  the  long  monastic 
story  cannot  but  feel  that  a  careful  analysis  of  the 
various  disbeliefs,  and  of  the  manifold  and  sometimes 
desperate  spiritual  maladies,  which  appeared  in  the  con- 
vents, would  make  an  even  sadder  record  than  that  of  the 
foulness  of  sensual  vice  which  is  often  held  their  chief  re- 
proach ;  while  it  was  evidentiy  true,  as  the  abbot  Joachim 
said,  himself  familiar  with  the  Cistercian  abbeys,  that  if 
a  monk  became  wicked,  no  creature  on  earth  was  more 
ambitious  and  covetous  than  he.  ^  He  was  not  merely 
blackened  in  repute  by  the  contrast  of  his  life  with  his 
profession,  he  fell  to  a  profouuder  depth  because  of  the 

^  8«e  Keander,  Hist,  of  Chareh,  toI.  iv.  p*  S44,  note. 


IN  HIS  M0NA8TI0  UFB.  278 

height  of  his  earlier  aim;  and  there  was  thereafter 
no  fresh  power  of  renovation  to  act  upon  him,  such  as 
might  have  been  found  in  a  freer  and  wider  external  life. 
He  put  himself  almost  beyond  the  pale  of  redemption ; 
and  the  figures  cut  into  cornices,  capitals,  and  gargoyles 
of  cathedrals  not  unfrequentlj  show  the  vivid  contem- 
poraneous  artistic  recognition  of  the  hideous  viciousness 
of  spirit  and  life  which  was  partly  hidden,  but  not  effec* 
tnally,  beneath  the  cowl.  It  was  not  without  reason 
that  Fra  Angelico,  himself  a  monk,  painted  monks 
among  the  lost,  or  that  Dante  put  some  of  them  into  the 
terrible  panorama  of  the  Inferno. 

But  from  these  dangers,  even  the  subtlest,  Bernard 
was  preserved,  not  only  by  the  grace  of  Qod  in  his  sincere 
and  ardent  soul,  but  by  his  assiduous  study  of  the  Scrip- 
ture, and  by  the  multitudinous  activities,  within  the  con- 
vent and  beyond  it,  which  constantly  engaged  him.  His 
was  certainly  never  that  ^  fugitive  and  cloistered  virtue  ^ 
which  Milton  reproved,  ^^  unexercised  and  unbreathed ; 
that  never  sallies  out  and  sees  the  adversary,  but  slinks 
out  of  the  race,  where  the  immortal  garland  is  to  be  run 
for,  not  without  dust  and  heat."  When  at  home  he 
preached  every  day,  besides  taking  his  faithful  part  in 
the  customary  labors.  He  wrote  treatises,  rich  in  the 
products  of  careful  reflection,  and  with  passages  of 
remarkable  beauty  and  power,  as  well  as  of  high  spiritual 
thought  His  letter-writing  was  constant,  of  vast  ex- 
tent and  variety,  often  concerning  the  gravest  matters. 
Nearly  five  hundred  of  his  letters  are  preserved.  They 
were  addressed  to  men  of  all  classes  and  conditions,  and 
on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  from  the  highest  themes  of 
truth,  duty,  and  Christian  experience,  to  the  humblest 
particulars  of  familiar  affairs  and  of  rustic  economy.  He 
wrote  to  the  poor  and  obscure  more  largely  than  to 

18 


J 


274  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

princes,  sending  letters  of  a  dozen  lines  to  the  King  of 
England,  and  of  ten  times  as  many  pages  to  some  weak 
monk  who  needed  his  counsel.^  His  visitors  were  many, 
and  of  the  most  distinguished  of  the  time.  His  care  of 
the  monasteries  affiliated  with  his  own  was  incessantly 
watchful.  His  utmost  energy  was  called  for,  and  was 
exerted,  in  the  successive  crises  which  confronted  him, 
in  the  Church,  and  in  the  State ;  and  nothing  seems  to 
have  occurred  in  France,  or  in  other  related  countries, 
during  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life,  concerning 
directly  or  indirectly  the  honor  and  interest  of  religion, 
which  was  not  brought  to  his  personal  notice,  on  which 
his  governing  practical  genius  was  not  at  once  intensely 
busy. 

So  it  was  that  that  life  in  the  monastery  to  which  he 
had  been  devoted  by  his  mother,  and  to  which  he  had 
given  himself  with  fervent  consecration  in  his  im- 
passioned and  brilliant  youth,  continued  to  be  to  him  a  joy 
and  a  reward,  even  to  the  end.  He  was  permitted  to  end 
his  days  in  the  beautiful  valley  which  he  and  his  com- 
panions had  rescued  and  redeemed  from  the  forest  and  the 
swamp,  and  had  turned  into  a  home  of  culture  and  peace, 
of  hospitality  to  the  poor,  of  a  solemn  but  to  them 
a  lovely  religious  service,  which  was  never  interrupted. 
The  last  sounds  in  his  ears  on  earth  were  the  voices 
of  those  whom  he  loved  and  had  taught,  bewailing  his 
death,  while  still  pursuing  their  daily  worship.  The  last 
faces  on  which  his  eye  rested  were  of  men  whom  he  had 
sheltered,  guided,  blessed.  I  do  not  imagine  that  he  had 
the  least  thought  of  any  fame  to  come  to  him  in  the 
world.  Every  traveller  must  have  noticed  at  the  Char- 
treuse, in  the  ancient  Dauphin^,  that  when  a  monk  has 
died  the  only  memorial  erected  over  him  is  a  frail  cross  of 

^  Ooinp.  epist.  zciL  tndcxxxTiU.  with  iL,  Tiin  «f  ol' 


IN  HIS  MONASTIC  LIFE.  276 

laih,  which  the  wind  and  the  storm  will  swiftly  destroy. 
The  feeling  beneath  the  custom  evidently  is  that  the 
man's  only  relations  are  to  be  thenceforth  with  the 
world  of  spirits,  and  that  it  is  of  no  importance  what- 
ever that  any  record  of  him  remain  among  men.  Un- 
doubtedly, that  was  the  feeling  of  Bernard.  It  must  have 
been  a  matter  to  him  of  supreme  indifference  whether 
men  ever  should  hear  of  him  or  not.  His  only  wish  was 
to  be  able  to  say,  in  penitent  humility,  as  his  Master 
had  said  before  him,  ^^  I  have  finished  the  work  which 
Thou  gavest  me  to  do." 

A  great  fame  has  followed  him,  however,  and  it  will 
not  fail  or  be  forgotten  as  the  centuries  pass.  He  cer- 
tainly  fulfilled  the  description  of  a  great  man  given  by 
Cousin,^  representing  what  was  noblest  in  the  spirit  of 
his  age,  while  associating  it  profoundly  with  what  was 
peculiar  in  his  intense  individuality.  The  monastery  of 
Clairvauz,  which  was  his  immediate  monument,  has 
passed  from  existence ;  the  many  abbeys  affiliated  with  it 
are  generally  in  ruins,  ai'e  all  no  doubt  in  hopeless  deca- 
denca  The  large  influence  which  he  left  upon  Europe 
has  ceased  to  be  distinguishable,  save  as  one  of  the 
commingling  elements  out  of  which  our  civilization  has 
come.  But  his  soon  canonized  name  has  shone  starlike 
in  history  ever  since  he  was  buried ;  and  it  will  not  here- 
after decline  from  its  height,  or  lose  its  lustre,  while 
men  continue  to  recognize  with  honor  the  temper  of  de- 
voted Christian  consecration,  a  character  compact  of 
noblest  forces,  and  infused  with  self-forgetful  love  for 
God  and  man. 

1  La  gimnd  homme  n'ert  done  tel  qa'k  la  doable  condition  d'etre  p^nitri 
d«  resprit  g^n^nd  de  son  penple,  et  en  mdme  temps  de  reprtenter  cet 
•split  g^n^nl  80Q8  une  forme  profond^ment  indiFidnelle  ;  toat  cela  dans 
oette  jnste  mesare,  qui  est  la  roarqne  de  la  rraie  grandeur  hnmaine.  — 
hUrotL  A  VHiiUdn  de  la  PhiiompkU,  p.  S04.    Paris  ed.,  1868. 


276  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIBTAnX  .* 

But  I  do  not  conceive  that  anything  of  this  was  in 
his  thoughts  as  he  drew  toward  death,  and  as  the  great 
shadow,  illuminated  with  promise,  and  shot  through 
with  Ascension  splendors,  fell  on  his  face.  He  died,  as 
he  had  lived,  a  devout  believer,  humble,  trustful,  hopeful, 
faithful ;  not  regretting  the  earth,  expecting  heaven ;  and 
I  am  as  certain  as  of  anything  not  involved  in  my  ex- 
perience that  in  that  hour,  more  even  than  ever 
before,  he  gave  thanks  to  Ood  who  had  moved  him 
by  His  Spirit,  and  led  him  by  His  providence,  and 
pressed  him  by  his  mother's  inspirations,  to  accept  and 
pursue  in  those  wild  times  the  holy  contemplations,  the 
studious  self-discipline,  the  labors  of  charity,  the  large 
and  manifold  beneficent  activities,  which  belonged  under 
him  to  the  Life  Monastic. 


LECTURE  V. 


B£RNASD  OF  CLA|BVAUX:  AS  A  THEOLOGIAN. 


LECTURE  V. 

BSBNABD  OF  GLAmYAUZ:  AS  ▲  THEOLOGIAN. 

If  I  were  not  profoundly  assured  of  the  culture  and 
kindness,  and  the  responsive  Christian  sensibility,  of  the 
audience  which  I  have  the  honor  to  address,  I  should 
shrink  from  attempting  to  present  this  evening,  in 
even  a  rapid  synoptical  way,  the  methods  and  results 
represented  in  the  theology  of  Bernard.  A  subject  less 
suited  to  what  is  known  as  a  ^^  popular  lecture "  can 
hardly  be  named ;  and  while  I  hope  that  you  may  be  in- 
terested in  what  I  shall  hereafter  say  of  his  work  as  a 
preacher,  of  his  controversy  with  Ab^lard,  or  of  his  gen- 
eral influence  upon  Europe,  I  am  unfeignedly  diffident 
in  asking  your  attention  to  his  particular  theological 
scheme.  In  parts,  at  least,  this  lies  so  far  from  the 
familiar  lines  of  thought  in  our  day  that  probably  none 
of  us  would  be  ready  to  accept  it  without  large  reserva- 
tions; and  while  in  many  things  he  who  held  it  cannot 
but  seem  to  us  like  one  of  ourselves,  only  with  grander 
endowment  of  powers,  and  with  a  finer  and  higher 
spirit,  in  this  he  may  seem  to  be  widely  and  essentially 
distanced  from  us,  dwelling  in  a  realm  of  customary 
thought  with  which  our  minds  are  unacquainted. 

But  of  course  no  view  of  him  could  be  even  approxi- 
mately complete  which  should  not  present,  in  outline  at 
least,  the  system  of  religious  thought  which  was  vital 


280  BERNARD  OF  CLAntVAUX  : 

and  inspiring  to  his  mind ;  and  it  cannot  be  without  in- 
terest, or  I  hope  without  profit,  for  us  to  consider  it. 
We  are  always  glad  to  see  the  houses  in  which  great 
men  have  lived,  though  we  may  not  care  to  inhabit  them 
ourselves;  and  no  system  of  speculative  thought,  on  the 
highest  themes,  which  was  dear  and  sacred  to  one  like 
Bernard,  can  fail  to  command  our  honoring  regard. 
The  architecture  which  builds  ideas  into  systems  is 
certainly  grander,  and  properly  more  memorable,  than 
that  which  turns  timbers  and  stones  into  houses.  The 
personal  attachments  which  cleave  to  such  systems, 
and  the  influences  which  fall  from  them,  are  more  inti- 
mate and  essential  than  belong  to  any  material  struc- 
ture; and  when  they  have  quickened  great  impulses, 
nurtured  grand  characters,  been  the  instruments  of 
mighty  effects,  we  ought  to  learn  if  we  may  the  secrets 
of  their  power,  to  get  at  least  some  positive  impression 
of  the  charm  which  either  of  them  had  to  him  whose  mind 
dwelt  lovingly  within  it.  So  it  is  not  with  hesitation, 
except  through  doubt  of  my  ability  to  open  it  clearly  and 
largely  enough,  that  I  ask  you  to  walk  awhile  with  me 
in  the  stately  corridors  of  Uiat  special  scheme  of  theolog- 
ical thought  which  was  supreme  to  the  mind  of  Bernard, 
—  surveying  its  proportions,  considering  the  relations  of 
its  principal  parts,  and  seeing  the  tinted  and  mullioned 
windows  through  which  the  light  from  above  streamed 
in.  Both  the  man  and  his  work  will  certainly  thus  be- 
come better  understood.  It  is  not  impossible  that  we 
shall  more  clearly  apprehend  the  power  which  belonged 
to  the  Church  in  which  he  was  recognized  as  ^<  the  last 
of  the  Fathers,"  and  which  later  enrolled  him  among  its 
saints. 

It  is  needful  at  the  outset  to  dismiss  from  our  minds 
any  lingering  impression  that  the  century  which  saw  bia 


AS  A  THBOLOOIAN.  281 

public  career  was  one  of  intellectual  stagnation,  in  which 
thought  was  dead,  or  in  which  discussions  of  even  prin- 
cipal questions  were  unknown  or  uncommon.  On  the 
other  hand,  discussion  was  active  and  wide,  and  was  re- 
latively free ;  and  the  germs  at  least,  or  initial  develop- 
ments, of  great  theological  and  philosophical  tendencies, 
which  in  subsequent  centuries  came  to  full  exhibition, 
were  already  apparent.  It  is  a  fair  measure  of  the 
activity  of  cultivated  thought  at  that  time  in  Europe, 
as  compared  with  the  previous  centuries,  that  while  a 
hundred  and  seventy-seven  noticeable  writers  are  reck- 
oned as  belonging  to  the  ninth  century,  only  eighty-four 
to  the  tenth,  only  a  hundred  and  fifty  to  the  eleventh,  to 
the  twelfth,  the  century  of  Bernard,  belong  two  hundred 
and  fifty-nine.^  Of  course  all  discussions  of  matters  of 
importance  were  conducted  in  the  Latin  language,  the 
language  o|  laws  and  public  documents,  the  language 
made  familiar  through  the  offices  of  the  Church,  and 
largely  employed  in  letters,  or  even  in  conversation, 
among  the  better  instructed.^  The  forms  of  such  dis- 
cussion were  therefore  scholastic ;  and  the  people  found 

1  See  Dr.  H.  B.  Smith's  "  Chroiiol<^cal  Tables,"  table  yiL  p.  86. 

*  Inter  hac  tamen  non  eztincta  omnino  Latina  Lingna,  ]ioet  in  senium 
qnodammodo  abierit,  totqne  etiam  barbararam  gentiam  collnvies  banc  yel 
detnrparit,  vel  absnmpserit,  cam  neqne  post  bac  amplias  nsn  hominum  fre- 
qnentaretnr ;  banc  enim  qni  in  iiteris  atcnmqae  versati  fnere,  vel  sacris  ordi- 
nibas  initiati«  nt  rerum  Ecdesiasticaram  stiidiis  necessariam  exoolnenint. 
...  Id  pono  non  minime  ad  Latinn  Lingnie  commendationem  condadt, 
qnod  inter  tot  barbaramm  gentium  nbiqae  fere  terramm  quasi  ezundationes 
se  se  utcumqne  servarit  incolnmem ;  ita  ut  Romana  Ecclesia  propriam  sibi 
eifeoerit,  et  cttters  nationes,  etiam  remotissims,  et  quas  Romani  nunqnam 
attigerant,  non  in  Sebolis  modo  publieis,  vemm  etiam  in  actis  fere  omnibus 
ea  usi  legantur.  .  .  •  Atque  id  quidem  in  Gallia  nostra  sic  obtinuit,  ut  et 
aeta  publica  ac  prirata  pleraque,  et  suprema  Curiarum  judicia*  Latino  fere 
idiomate  semper  describerentur,  quod  serius  delitum  Francisco  I.  regnanta 
— *DlJ  Cahox  :  iVcs/.  QUm.  Man.  {  85. 


282  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRyATTZ  : 

no  expression  for  their  thought  unless  dissenting  wholly 
from  the  doctrines  of  the  Church,  refusing  its  liturgy, 
and  resuming  the  liberty  of  their  native  tongue ;  as  one 
of  the  most  important  memorials  showing  the  early 
character  of  the  Romance  dialect,  is  a  document  of  the 
Albigenses  that  yet  presents  it.^  Of  course,  too,  at  that 
time,  three  centuries  before  the  moveable  type  gave 
wings  to  words  and  opened  the  way  for  the  instant 
utterance  of  any  thought  by  any  thinker,  the  number  of 
those  among  the  educated  who  took  an  important  part 
in  such  discussions  was  always  limited,  Uiat  general 
and  rapid  comparison  of  views  which  now  goes  on  being 
impossible. 

But  while  these  things  are  true  it  is  tme,  also,  that 
the  period  intervening  between  the  commencement  of 
the  ninth  and  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  centuries 
was  pre-eminently  the  period  in  the  Western  Church 
for  the  articulation  and  systematic  distribution  of 
theological  doctrine.  That  Church  was  no  longer 
powerfully  affected  by  the  Eastern  communions.  It 
was  left  to  organize  doctrine  for  itself;  and  in  the 
absence  of  impulse  or  key  to  the  large  and  progressive 
exploration  of  nature,  the  mental  and  moral  activity  of 
the  time  turned,  perhaps  superabundantly,  in  this  direc- 
tion.'    At  that  time,  too,  many  questions^  were  still  un- 

^  "  Aprte  lea  serments  de  842,  tm  des  plus  anciens  monaments  de  la 
langne  romane,  c*est  la  Noble  Le^on  des  Vandois,  pieuse  et  simple  para- 
phrase de  mazimes  ^vang^liqnes.  Lk,  nen  n'indiqae  absolnroent  une 
h^r^e  dogmatiqne ;  mais  on  sent  nn  esprit  de  libre  examen  et  de  con- 
science  individnelle.  Ces  mazimes  s^vferes,  cette  morale  pure,  oette  religian 
simple  et  s'ezprimant  en  langne  Tulgaire,  ^taient  copamnnes  k  an  gnnd 
nombre  dliabltants  dn  dioc^  d'Albi ;  d'oti  vint  le  nom  d'Albigeois."  — 
ViLLKHAiN :  Tableau  de  la  LitL  au  Mcyen  Age,  torn.  1.  p.  167,  le^n  tL 
Psris  ed,  1882. 

*  Les  lettres  latines  fnrent  cnltiT^es  avec  soin  dans  les  monasttoes 
imglaii ;  et  U  th^logie  servit  k  ranimer  le  go&t  de  I'^tuds.    C*Mt  VM 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  283 

detennined  by  dogmatic  decisions  of  the  Church,  which 
among  Roman  Catholics,  at  least  since  the  Council  of 
Trent,  have  no  longer  offered  a  field  for  discussion. 
The  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation,  for  example,  was  not 
definitiyely  settled  for  that  communion  until  the  Lateran 
Council  of  A.  D.  1215.  It  was  not,  indeed,  until  the 
Synod  of  Vienne,  a.  d.  1811,  that  the  doctrine  was  ex- 
pressed in  liturgical  form,  and  the  sacrifice  of  the  Mass 
made  the  dominant  centre  of  the  Catholic  ritual.  That 
the  sacraments  of  the  Church  were  properly  seven  in 
number  is  said  often  to  have  been  first  publicly  suggested 
by  Otto  of  Bamberg,  in  or  after  the  middle  of  the  twelfth 
century ;  ^  and  while  a  constantly  increasing  veneration 

r^ponse  k  ropinion  de  cenx  qui  ont  regard^  le  r^gne  de  la  theologie  dans 
le  moyen  Age  comme  one  ^poque  perdue  pour  I'mteUigence  humaine.  La 
thtel<^e  a  ^t^  la  forme  que  prenait  alors  la  pens^.  De  m^e  que,  dans 
im  autre  tempo,  toutee  les  idees  se  traduiront  en  idto  politiques,  et  s'ap- 
pUqneront  anx  grands  probl^mes  de  la  soci^te ;  ainsi,  dans  le  moyen  &ge, 
lea  eaprits  se  faisant  une  occupatiou  k  la  fois  plus  subtile  et  plus  desin- 
t^ress^  tontes  lea  id^es,  toutes  les  forces  du  raisonnement  s*appliquaient 
Ik  la  vie  ftitare.  Mais  par  cela  m6me  que  cette  occupation  tonte  m^ta- 
phyaique  ayait  qnelqne  chose  de  vague  et  d'incertain,  elle  avait  aussi 
qnelqne  cboee  de  grand,  de  hardi,  de  singuliirement  favorable  k  r^l^vation 
et  k  Toriginalit^  do  la  pens^e.  Ne  vous  ^tonnes  done  pas  que  sous  cet 
aanaa  thtelogique  on  tronve  parfois  une  etonnante  sagacity,  un  grand  esprit 
sfcMlement  consume  Le  th^logien  d'une  ^poqne  e4t  ^t^  le  pbUosopbe 
d'one  autre.  —  Villkmaik  :  Tableau  de  la  LUUrature  au  Moyen  Jge^ 
torn,  ii  pp.  152-158.     Paris  ed.,  1882. 

^  As  late  as  the  present  period  [age  of  Systematic  Theology]  the  opin- 
ioiia  of  the  theologians  on  this  point  [the  number  of  the  sacraments]  were 
for  a  considerable  time  divided.  Rabanus  Maurus  and  Paschasins  Rad- 
bertos  acknowledged  only  four  sacraments,  or,  more  properly  speaking, 
only  the  two  sacraments  of  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper  [adding  the 
Cbrisma  to  Baptism,  and  dividing  the  Snpper  according  to  its  two  ele- 
ments]. •  .  .  Peter  Damiani  mentioned  as  many  as  twelve  sacraments. 
Whether  Otto^  Bishop  of  Bamberg,  introduced  the  seven  sacraments 
among  the  Pomeranians  is  a  point  which  remains  to  be  investigated.  The 
TiewB  of  Peter  Lombard  on  the  subject  were  more  decided.  [He  distinctly 
•snmerates  Baptism ,  Gk>nfinnationt  the  Eocharist,  Penance^  Extreine  Uiio* 


284  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBTAUZ: 

was  paid  to  the  Virgin  Mary,  the  doctrine  of  her  Immar 
ciilate  Conception,  without  stsdn  of  original  sin,  which 
has  now  been  declared  an  article  of  faith,  was  then  ear- 
nestly, and  for  a  long  time  successfully,  resisted. 

Indeed,  the  judgment  of  the  Pontiff,  the  judgment  of 
Church-councils,  on  points  which  had  been  presented  for 
settlement,  were  held  by  many  to  be  properly  subject  to 
subsequent  discussion,  and  a  different  decision.  The 
English  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  Robert  Orostfite,  preaching 
before  the  Papal  Court  at  Lyons,  a.  d.  1260,  a  century 
later  than  Bernard,  declared  that  when  a  pope  is  moved 
to  do  what  is  contrary  to  the  precept  and*  will  of  Christ, 
he  who  obeys  him  separates  from  Christ  and  from  His 
body ;  and  that  wheneyer  a  universal  obedience  shall  be 
paid  to  him  in  such  things  the  univeraal  apostaoy 
will  have  come.  The  Pope,  naturally  enraged  by  snch 
boldness  of  language,  desired  to  displace  and  punish  tiie 
bishop,  but  was  unable  to  do  it.^  So  William  of  St. 
Armour,  Doctor  of  Theology  in  the  Paris  University, 
writing  against  the  mendicant  orders,  a.  d.  1265,  did  not 

tion,  Ordination,  and  Marriage.]  Hagenbach's  Hist  Christ.  Doot,  iL  pt 
821-322.     Edinburgh  ed. 

^  Matthew  Paris  gives  a  letter  written  by  the  bishop  to  the  Pope  a  litfk 
later,  a.  d.  1258,  the  freedom  of  which  wiU  appear  fh)m  a  few  seotenoes : 
"  Apoetolica  enim  mandata  non  sunt  nee  esse  possant  alia  quam  Aposfco* 
lomm  doctrinffi  et  Ipsius  Domini  nostri  Jesu  Christi.  .  .  •  Kon  est  igitur 
prsdicts  litene  tenor  ApostolicA  sanctitati  consonus,  sed  absonos  pluri- 
mum  et  discors.  .  .  .  Hoc  enim  esset  sue  potestatis  evidenter  sanctissimsB 
et  plenissimsB  vel  defectio  yel  cormptio  yel  abusio,  et  a  throno  glorie  Domini 
nostri  Jesu  Christi  omnimoda  elongatio,  et  in  cathedra  pestilentin  poenamm 
gehennalium  dnobns  pnedictis  tenebrarum  principibus  prozima  cooasessio. 
Nee  potest  quis  immaculata  et  sincera  obedientia  eidem  sedi  subditus 
et  fidelis  .  .  .  hnjnsmodi  mandatis  yel  pneceptis  vel  quibnscunque  eona* 
minibus  undecnnqne  emanantibus,  optemperare ;  sed  neoesse  habet  totts 
Tiribus  contradicere  et  rebellare.'*  The  historian  adds  that  the  Pope  was 
infuriated,  but  was  dissuaded  by  the  shrewder  ftardinals  from  pormiDg  iht 
nsttar. * CTbfvnte  if<^0r«i  A.&.  1268. 


▲S  A  THEOLOGIAN.  285 

hesitate  to  saj  that  though  their  mode  of  life  had  been 
erroneously  authorized  by  the  Church,  while  in  fact  at 
variance  with  the  Gospel,  such  judgment  should  be 
revoked,  as  the  truth  had  now  become  better  known,  and 
as  the  judgment  of  the  Roman  Church  was  liable  to  cor- 
rection. His  book  was  condemned  by  the  Pontiff,  and 
he  was  constrained  to  resign  his  office,  and  to  go  into  re- 
tirement in  Burgundy ;  but  he  was  reconciled  with  the 
successor  of  the  then  reigning  Pope,  and  his  bold  decla- 
ration of  the  fallibility  of  the  Church  excited  no  general 
indignation.^  There  was  thus  a  wider  field  in  matters 
of  theology  open  then  for  discussion  than  there  has  been 
in  recent  centuries  in  the  Roman  communion;  and  it 
was  in  great  measure  from  the  labors  of  those  who 
then  set  forth  and  maintained  their  opinions  that  the 
subsequent  authoritative  dogmatic  decisions,  declaring 
against  these  opinions  or  for  them,  took  occasion  and 
form. 

Even  as  early  as  the  latter  half  of  the  ninth  century 
had  appeared  a  really  revolutionary  activity  on  the  part 
of  some,  searching  into,  scrutinizing,  and  sharply  re- 
shaping the  commonly  received  doctrines  of  the  Church 
in  regard  to  questions  fundamental.  Of  this,  John  Sco- 
tos  Erigena,  at  the  court  of  Charles  the  Bald,  is  the 
palmary  example.  Surpassing,  probably,  every  one  of 
his  time,  if  not  all  in  the  presently  following  centuries, 
in  the  audacity  and  the  range  of  his  genius,  he  reached 
novel  conclusions  with  a  rapid  boldness  which  would  seem 
incredible  if  the  facts  were  not  certain.  A  master  of 
the  Oreek  language,  and  familiar  with  the  writings  of  the 
Greek  Fathers  as  well  as  of  the  Latin,  deeply  impressed 
by  his  study  of  Origen,  and  of  the  Pseudo-Dionysius,  the 
writings  attributed  to  whom  he  had  translated,  a  Neo- 

1  See  Neuder,  Hist,  of  Chnrcb,  vol.  iv.  pp.  888-289. 


286  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUZ  ! 

Platonist  in  his  pbilospohical  tendencies,  he  elaborated 
a  scheme  substautiallj  pantheistic,  though  modified  by 
the  influence  of  his  early  belief  in  a  personal  God  and 
in  the  Scriptures.  He  insisted  that  religion  must  justify 
itself  to  the  reason  of  man,  and  that  authoritjr  is 
properly  insufficient  to  support  it.  In  the  rational 
consciousness  of  man  was  his  ultimate  source  of  religious 
knowledge.  The  absolute  Being,  in  his  view,  transcends 
all  representation,  is  by  nature  incomprehensible.  The 
Scriptural  account  of  Grod  is  a  symbolic  representation, 
adapted  to  the  succor  of  human  weakness.  Religion  is 
philosophy,  veiled  in  traditions  with  which  the  higher 
minds  dispense.  The  statements  that  Grod  loves  or  can 
be  loved,  acts  or  can  be  acted  upon,  are  but  relatively 
true,  a  condescension  to  human  infirmity.  God  alone  is, 
eternal  and  inexpressible ;  and  true  being  in  everything 
is  God.  Evil  is  therefore  only  apparent,  the  back- 
ground on  which  the  lustre  of  goodness  is  displayed. 
The  conception  of  it  arises  from  contemplation  of  par- 
ticulars,  instead  of  the  whole.  What  is  called  sin  is  a 
transition-point  in  human  experience,  through  which 
men  pass  into  final  union  with  the  Divine  archetype.  It 
is  a  self-abolishing  principle,  which  for  God  has  no 
existence.  He  does  not  punish  it,  but  so  constitutes  the 
order  of  things  that  it  punishes  itself.  The  Scriptural 
report  of  its  punishment  is  figurative,  and  the  belief 
in  such  punishment  is  a  human  prejudice.  Faith  is  a 
certain  subjectivi^  principle,  from  which  the  conviction  of 
the  Absolute  iB  derived  in  a  reasonable  creature ;  and 
salvation  essentially  consists  in  believing  what  we  can 
rationally  affirm  concerning  the  original  of  all  things, 
and  in  comprehending  what  we  believe.  ^^  Father  "  and 
"  Son  *'  are  names  t.o  which  no  corresponding  distinctions 
exist  in  the  Divine  Essence ;  and  the  eucharist  is  a  sym* 


A8  A  THEOLOGUN.  287 

bolic  memorial  of  Christ's  death.    Of  any  papal  infalli« 
bility  he  seems  to  have  had  no  thought  whatever. 

It  may  naturally  surprise  us  that  doctrines  like  these 
could  be  enunciated  in  France,  in  the  presence  of  the 
hierarchy,  in  the  last  half  of  the  ninth  century.  But 
they  were  largely  protected  by  their  novelty,  and  by  the 
failure  of  officials  to  recognize  their  meaning,  or  to 
see  how  destructive  to  the  whole  Church-system  their 
tendencies  were.  If  their  author  had  written  in  the 
Gaelic  or  the  Coptic  dialect  the  continental  ecclesiastics 
would  almost  equally  have  understood  what  he  wrote. 
It  simply  surpassed  the  apprehension  of  the  time,  was 
wholly  beyond  its  sphere  of  thought ;  and  though  antago- 
nists appeared,  and  his  writings  were  at  a  later  time 
pontifically  condemned,  ^  he  seems  to  have  remained  in 
personal  security,  and  at  last  to  have  died  in  peace. 
But,  in  fact,  the  whole  energy  of  a  rationalizing  scholas- 
ticism, acting  upon  theological  opinion  as  a  dissolving 
and  recasting  force,  had  prophetically  appeared  in  him. 
He  would  probably  have  had  disciples  and  successors  in 
the  same  line  of  thought,  in  the  following  century,  if 
it  had  not  been  a  period  of  such  universal  turbulence  and 
decay.  He  did  have  them  subsequently,  as  partly  in 
Almaric,  or  David  of  Dinanto.  But  in  the  slow  develop- 
ment of  history  he  stands  before  us  alone  in  his  time;  an 
enigmatic  man;  coming  as  unexpectedly  as  a  meteor 
bursting  in  the  air.  As  sometimes  out  of  January  dark- 
ness and  chill  a  shining  day  sallies  to  meet  us,  as  if  to 
assure  us  that  summer  is  coming,  so  he  appears,  a  vivid 
herald  of  the  freedom  in  thought,  the  energetic  and 
daring  speculative  genius,  which,  after  centuries  of  tem- 
pestuous chill  and  the  echoing  whirl  of  social  storms, 

^  His  tnet  on  the  eucliarist  was  condemned  at  Rome,  and  ordered  to 
be  bamed  a.  d.  1059. 


288  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIByAnZ  : 

were  again  to  be  seen  in  Europe.  His  results  we  maj 
none  of  us,  probably,  accept.  His  immense  and  intrepid 
mental  activity  we  cannot  but  honor.  ^ 

The  discussion  started  in  the  same  century  by  Oott- 
schalk,  a  monk  educated  at  Fulda,  on  the  twofold  Pre- 

^  The  impression  made  by  this  extraordinary  writer  has  always  been 
powerful,  bat  has  varied  naturally  with  the  temper  of  his  readers :  — 

"Ceuz  qui  ont  mieuz  connu  Scot  avooent  k  la  v^t^  qu'il  avoit  de 
r^rudition,  mais  une  Erudition  toute  profane.  Qu'au  reste  ce  n'6toit  dans 
le  fond  qu'un  Sophiste  plein  de  subtilit^  et  de  hardiesse ;  un  grand  Dia- 
ooureur,  qui  par  Tetalage  de  ses  vains  disoouis  avoit  s^uit  grand  nombro 
de  personnes." — Siai.  IAU,y  torn.  ▼.  p.  417.  [This  judgment  is  an  echo  of 
the  statement  of  Flore  Diacre,  p.  229,  who  wrote  in  reply  to  Erigena.] 

The  emphatic  yet  temperate  words  of  Dr.  Christlieb  will  commend 
themselves  to  most :  *'  Dase  die  Uniyersalitat  seines  Qeistes,  durch  die 
er  als  Theolog  und  Philosoph,  als  Homilet^  Exeget,  Uebersetser  and  sogv 
als  Dichter  anftreten  konnte,  sein  scharfer  Yerstand,  seine  Uberlegene  dii^ 
lektische  Gewandtheit,  seine  vielgepriesene  Beredtsamkeit,  seine  damals 
wohl  beispiellose  Qelehrsamkeit,  und  besonders  seine  Kenntnias  der  griechi- 
schen  Sprache  und  Literatur  bei  alien,  die  ihm  nahe  standen,  oder  ihn 
aus  seinen  Schriften  kennen  zu  lemen  sich  die  Miihe  nahmen,  die  gRMSte 
Bewunderung  erregen  musste  und  noch  muss,  mag  die  DarsteUung  seiner 
Lehre  beweisen ;  sie  wild  ihm  auch  Yon  der  Mehnahl  der  alten  Geschicht- 
schreiber  nicht  verweigert ;  musste  doch  selbst  Papet  Nioolaus  aneikennen, 
dass  E.  multe  scienticD  esse  prsedicatur."  —  Zeftm  und  Lehm  de»  J,  Seoiu$ 
Brigina.    Gotha,  1860.    S.  59. 

*' Jean  Scot  avait  puis^  dans  oe  conmierce  [translating  Dionysius]  une 
foule  d*idto  depuis  longtemps  perdues  en  Europe  et  qui  paruient  bien 
nouveUes  lorsqu'il  les  produisit  dans  ses  deux  ouvrages.  Gomme  sea  idto 
n'avaient  de  racines  ni  dans  les  Etudes  ni  dans  les  tendances  du  temps, 
elles  r^tonn^rent  plus  qu'elles  ne  I'intruisirent,  et  de  nos  jours  eUes  ont 
^bloui  ceux  qui  n*en  connaissaient  pas  I'origine.  Jean  Scot  n'est  point  un 
profond  metaphysicien,  comme  on  le  croit  en  AUemagne,  c'eat  tout  simple- 
ment  un  Alexandrin  attarde,  qui  aurait  dii  nattre  troia  ou  quatre  st^es 
plus  tdt  ou  plus  tanL"  —  Cousin  :  Hid,  OVh.  d€  la  FkUMophiu^  p.  222. 
Paris  ed.,  1867. 

Bitter  says  of  him :  ''  He  stands  as  an  enigma  among  the  many  rid- 
dles which  these  times  present.*'    See  also  Hagenbach,  Hist  of  Doet,  iL 

117. 
For  some  illustrations  of  his  general  scheme  of  thou|^t  see  Appendix 

A,  p.  348. 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  289 

destination^  to  evil  as  to  good,  moved  of  course  within 
narrower  lines,  and  exhibited  far  less  of  brilliancy  of 
mind  and  discursive  power,  though  Erigena  took  an  ac- 
tive part  in  it ;  but  it  showed,  at  least  in  him  by  whom 
it  was  commenced,  and  in  those  who  continued  it, — 
whether  agreeing  with  him,  or  encountering  him  with 
the  higher  idea  of  universality  in  the  august  provisions 
of  Redemption,  —  how  active  thought  was  in  impor- 
tant directions,  and  how  capable  was  the  mind  of  the 
time  of  being  stirred  by  questions  which  touch  the 
equities  of  the  Divine  government,  and  which  can 
never  be  fully  answered  till  we  can  compass  Eternal 
counsels. 

The  same  thing  appears  from  the  later  controversy  in 
which  Berengar  of  Tours,  to  whom  I  have  already  re- 
ferred, became  a  principal  figure,  which  concerned  the 
real  presence  of  Christ  in  the  elements  of  the  Supper. 
As  head  of  the  Cathedral  school  in  his  native  city,  Ber- 
engar had  attracted  many  pupils,  and  had  acquired  large 
influence  with  them  by  bis  various  learning,  his  amiable 
piety,  his  courtesy  of  manner,  and  his  spirit  of  mental 
independence.  Somewhere  about  the  middle  of  the 
eleventh  century  he  began  to  teach  that  not  the  true 
body  and  blood  of  Christ,  but  only  their  symbols,  are  in 
the  eucharist.  He  insisted  that  not  Erigena  only,  but 
Augustine,  Jerome,  Ambrose  had  held  this  doctrine,  and 
were  heretics  with  himself  if  this  were  heretical.  Un- 
der constraint  of  an  adverse  judgment  of  the  Pope  and 
a  Council,  and  in  fear  for  his  life,  he  recanted  his  opin- 
ions. But  he  subsequently  again  proclaimed  them 
widely,  and  exercised  great  liberty  of  speech  as  against 
the  Church  rulers,  declaring  that  Leo  Ninth  had  shown 
himself  a  fool  in  this  matter  as  in  others,  that  he  was  a 
Pompifex,  not  a  Pontifex,  and  that  the  Roman  Church 

19 


290  BERNARD  OF  GLAntVAUZ: 

was  not  an  apostolic  see,  but  a  seat  of  Satan.^  The  mi* 
nority  of  diflciples,  however  emally  holding  the  truth,  he 
declared  to  constitute  the  true  Church,  and  not  the  mul- 
titude of  the  undisceming.  Gregory  Seventh,  whether 
as  cardinal  or  as  pope,  seems  to  have  been  personally 
friendly  to  him ;  but  after  bis  final  trial  at  a  Synod  in 
Borne,  he  retired  to  a  solitary  life,  and  died  at  an  ad- 
vanced  age  three  years  before  Bernard  was  bom. 

He  could  not,  of  course,  accomplish  much  against  the 
strong  currents  of  Church  opinion  by  which  he  was  be- 
set, and  he  had  neither  the  genius  of  Erigena  nor  the 
undaunted  boldness  of  Gottschalk,  though  he  seems  in 
the  main  to  have  fought  a  good  fight.  The  doctrine  of 
Transubstantiation  was  once  described  by  John  Selden 
as  ^*  only  Rhetoric  turned  into  Logic."  ^  But  it  had  a 
far  deeper  foundation  than  that.  It  had  begun  in  pious 
feeling,  associating  a  supernatural  grace  with  the  ele- 
ments of  the  Supper  until  these  were  transfigured.  It 
offered  a  wholly  transcendental  conception  of  the  nature 
of  the  eucharist,  and  represented  to  the  minds  which  re- 
ceived it  millions  of  miracles,  incessantly  repeated.  So 
it  drew  to  itself  not  only  a  sentiment  of  tender  devout- 
ness,  but  the  imaginative  affection  and  enthusiasm  of 
those  to  whose  thought  the  supernatural  was  near. 
Though  at  first  set  forth,  therefore,  by  a  single  abbot, 
Paschasius  Radbertus,  as  late  as  the  year  a.d.  881, 
it  was  BO  consonant  with  the  feeling  of  the  time,  it 
blended  itself  so  easily  and  so  intimately  with  the 
aspiring  consciousness  of  Christians,  and  it  seemed  to 

1  "  Nempe  sanctam  Leonem  papain,  son  pontiftcem,  Md  pompificem  et 
pulpificem,  appellavit  .  .  .  BomaDam  sedem  non  apostolicam  aed  aedem 
aatana  dictia  et  acriptia  non  timuit  appeUare."  (Letter  of  a  oonteiB- 
poraiy,  qnoted  by  Neander,  vol.  Hi.  p.  618,  note.) 

'  TMb  Talk*  p.  255.    London  ed.,  1860. 


AS  A  THBOLOOIAN,  891 

bring  the  Lord  so  palpably  before  them»  that  it  gained  an 
ever  widening  power  until  it  became  a  dogma  of  faith. 
Bnt  how  much  Berengar  could  accomplish  for  his  opin- 
ion  is  not  the  matter  now  before  us.  What  we  have 
to  notice  is  the  fact  that  he  both  thought  and  wrote  so 
freely  as  he  did ;  and  that  in  the  generation  preceding 
Bernard  this  positive  conception  of  a  spiritud  church, 
embracing  those  morally  affiliated  by  their  common  re- 
ception of  spiritual  truth,  was  distinctly  presented,  while 
the  Reformed  doctrine  of  the  sacraments  was  in  essence 
Tigorously  maintained.  This,  of  itself,  suffices  to  show 
that  the  time  was  not  one  of  mental  stagnation.  Bather, 
it  was  marked  by  fermenting  forces,  some  of  which  carried 
men  much  further  than  Berengar  had  gone  in  divergence 
from  tiie  customary  doctrine. 

I  have  mentioned  already  the  utter  unbelief  afterward 
ascribed  to  the  German  emperor,  Frederick  Second. 
Notice  is  tak^n  too  by  Neander  of  a  Count  of  Soissons, 
who,  though  outwardly  recognizing  the  festivals  of  the 
Church,  ridiculed  and  assailed  the  whole  scheme  of  the 
Christian  Religion,  often  by  arguments  derived  from  the 
Jews ;  against  whom  an  abbot  wrote  a  book,  defending 
the  doctrine  of  the  Incarnation.^  Others,  distinctly  dis- 
believed in  any  Resurrection ;  and  a  Bishop  of  Paris,  A.  D. 
1196,  ordered  a  card  to  be  laid  on  his  breast,  after  his 
death,  affirming  his  belief  in  it,  as  a  testimony  to  those 
who  should  view^  his  body.  In  the  school  of  theolog- 
ical instruction  at  Orleans,  in  the  eleventh  century,  as  I 
have  previously  noticed,  an  actual  Gnosticism  had  come 
to  be  taught ;  and  ecclesiastics  prominent  for  benevo- 
lence, knowledge,  piety,  had  suffered  death  on  behalf  of 
these  opinions  with  a  supreme  courage.  Similar  doc- 
trines had  appeared  later  at  Lidge  and  Cambrai,  and 

1  Keander,  Hist,  of  the  Church,  vol.  iy.  p.  825. 


292  BERNARD  OP  CLAIRVAUX  : 

still  later  at  Turin,  where  the  Son  of  Grod  was  declared 
to  be  the  soul  of  man,  enlightened  and  renewed;  the 
Holy  Spirit  to  mean  the  true  understanding  of  the  Scrip- 
tures ;  and  where  the  Gospel  history  of  the  Lord  was 
treated  as  a  myth.  The  Gatharists,  the  Henricians,  the 
Petrobrusians,  all  widely  diverging  from  the  doctrine  of 
the  Church  if  not  scornfully  rejecting  it,  not  only  were 
-numerous  in  France,  but  they  multiplied  so  rapidly, 
especially  in  the  South,  that  Bernard,  going  into  regions 
affected  by  their  opinions,  found,  as  he  said,  ^^  churches 
without  people,  peoples  without  priests,  priests  with- 
out respect  paid  to  them,  Christians  without  Christ; 
churches  were  regarded  as  synagogues,  the  sanctuary  of 
God  was  not  esteemed  holy,  the  solemn  festivals  were  not 
observed ;  men  were  dying  in  their  sins,  and  called  to  the 
great  final  Tribunal,  neither  reconciled  to  God  by  peni- 
tence, nor  fortified  by  the  sacramenf  ^  This  naturally 
seemed  to  him  .a  spiritual  calamity,  more  frightful  than 
any  of  pestilence  or  of  war. 

It  cannot  be  needful  to  multiply  examples  to  show 
how  far  his  age  was  from  being  one  of  passive  quies- 
cence, or  of  universal  acquiescence  in  the  customary  be- 
liefs. The  spirit  of  unrest  was  widely  abroad;  and 
among  men  of  more  scholarly  habit,  the  temper  of  free 
if  not  sceptical  inquiry  exhibited  by  Roscelin  the  nom- 
inalist, and  more  signally  by  Ab^lard,  of  whom  I  am  to 
speak  hereafter,  was  coming  to  prominent  manifestation. 
Yet  over  against  these  tendencies  hostile  to  the  entire 

1  Basilica  sine  plebilnis,  plebes  sine  saoerdotibus,  saoerdotes  sine  defaito 
reverentia  sunt,  et  sine  Christo  deniqne  Christiani.  Ecclesise  synagogsB  re- 
pntantur ;  sanctaariutn  Dei  aanctiim  esse  negator ;  sacramenta  non  sacra 
conaentar ;  dies  festivis  fnistrantor  solemniis.  Morinntur  homines  in  pee- 
catia  sola ;  rapiontor  aninue  passim  ad  tribunal  terrilicum,  ben !  neo 
posnitentia  reconciliati,  nee  sancta  commnnione  muniti.  —  Opera^  yoL 
prim,  epiflt  oczli.  col.  506. 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  298 

Chnrch-flTBteni,  was  set  a  fresh  and  wide  activity,  in 
stadj  and  thonght  as  well  as  in  action,  on  the  part  of 
those  who  maintained  the  old  and  common  faith.  The 
fuller  pulses  of  Church-life,  which  from  the  time  of  Greg- 
ory Seventh  had  been  felt  throughout  the  Latin  com- 
munion, showed  themselves  here,  as  well  as  in  the  build- 
ing of  churches  and  monasteries,  the  initiation  of  cru« 
sades,  or  the  missions  to  pagan  peoples.  The  brain  of 
the  Church,  as  well  as  its  heart,  was  charged  witii  new 
force ;  and  the  elements  of  future  vehement  controver- 
sies were  already  battling  in  the  stimulated  air.  The 
seminaries  which  had  been  established  for  the  theology 
ical  education  of  students,  at  Fulda,  at  Chartres,  Tours, 
Bheims,  Bee,  and  elsewhere,  were  revived  and  invigo- 
rated ;  lectures  were  given  in  exposition  of  the  Scriptures ; 
and  the  Glossa  Ordinaria,  the  common  exegetical  manual 
of  the  time,  was  widely  copied.  The  Irish  schools,  long 
distinguished  for  their  relative  fr^om  and  breadth, 
were  as  active  as  ever;  and  on  alk sides  questions  of 
doctrine  were  canvassed  and  discussed  with  ardent  zeal, 
if  not  always  with  fine  or  high  intelligence. 

The  foundation  of  the  Universities  occurred  at  this 
time;  the  abbot  of  Croyland,  as  I  have  said,  com- 
mencing that  at  Cambridge,  in  a  barn,  in  a.  d.  1110 ; 
that  at  Oxford  having  begun,  probably,  a  little  earlier,  in 
the  schools  of  its  religious  houses,  but  now  coming 
to  fresh  importance,  especially  in  connection  with  the 
instruction  in  the  Scriptures  given  there  by  Robert 
Pullein,  a  man  English-born  but  educated  in  France,  and 
afterward  a  distinguished  theologian  and  cardinal.^  The 
primary  impulse  to  the  University  of  Paris  came  in 
the  same  period,  from  the  famous  lectures  of  William  of 
Q^ampeaux;  and  Anselm,  who  finished  his  illustrious 

^  HiB  lectnns  began  there  A.  D.  1188. 


294  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBTAnZ  : 

career  in  a.  d.  1109,  Peter  Lombard,  who  was  oon- 
temporaneous  with  Bernard,  Hugo  of  St.  Yictoire,  called 
afterward  ^  the  Second  Augustine,''  with,  a  little  later, 
John  of  Salisbury,  represent  sufficiently  the  power  and 
skill,  and  the  devout  sensibility,  which  were  enlisted 
in  doctrinal  research.  In  the  century  following,  Thomas 
Aquinas,  the  ^^ Angelical  Doctor,"  and  Bonaventura,  the 
^Seraphical  Doctor,"  carried  on  the  succession,  and 
brought  it  to  what  seemed  its  splendid  climax.  They 
were  themselves  the  gital  product  of  spiritual  forces 
which  already  were  working,  with  a  prophesying  energy, 
in  the  day  of  Bernard. 

In  endeavoring  to  place  him  in  our  thought  among 
such  men,  there  are  some  things  which,  in  fairness 
to  him,  should  be  distinctly  borne  in  mind.  One  is  that 
his  genius  was  sensitive  and  practical,  rather  than  diap 
lectical,  sympathetic  with  truth,  and  with  tmfli  in 
mysterious  forms  and  relations,  rather  than  patient  and 
profound  in  analysis.  With  a  feminine  intensity  of  spirit, 
a  deep  and  delicate  moral  sensibility,  and  a  rich  spiritual 
experience,  the  philosophical  power  was  yet  not  so 
proi.ounced  in  him  as  in  some  others.  Another  &ing  to 
be  equally  remembered  is  this:  that  in  harmony  with 
this  temper  he  had  always  in  view  a  supreme  practical 
end,  the  leading  of  men  to  the  highest  attainments  in 
that  Divine  Life  in  which  his  own  progress  was  assiduous 
and  illustrious.  And  a  third  thing  is,  that  he  was  con* 
stantly  engaged  in  administrative  a£Pairs,  which  to  him 
appeared  of  vast  importance.  Not  only  in  his  monastery, 
not  only  in  constant  care  and  oversight  of  the  connected 
monasteries,  but  in  the  public  affairs  of  the  time,  in  the 
counselling  of  kings,  the  election  and  enthronement  of 
popes,  the  discipline  of  the  Order  of  Templars,  the  giving 
vast  impulse  to  crusades,  he  was  absorbingly  engaged ; 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  295 

and  scant  time  was  left  for  the  searching,  fundamental, 
ezhaustiye  examination  of  the  immense  problems  which 
theology  presents.  If  we  fail,  therefore,  to  find  in  him 
the  extraordinary  power  of  metaphysical  analysis,  with 
philosophical  co-ordination  of  ascertained  conclusions, 
which  Anselm  showed  for  example,  or  Aquinas  after* 
ward,  we  need  not  be  surprised.  His  life,  on  the  whole, 
seems  to  me  among  the  noblest  phenomena  of  his  age ; 
but  I  by  no  means  affirm  that  in  the  department  of 
original  and  enlightening  theological  speculation  he  had 
not  superiors. 

He  is,  in  fact,  chiefly  important,  in  this  direction,  as 
representing  in  its  best  form,  and  with  a  halo  projected 
upon  it  from  his  radiant  spiritual  life,  the  doctrine  which 
he  had  learned  in  his  youth,  which  seemed  to  him 
confirmed  by  experience  and  illumined  by  the  Scripture, 
and  in  which  his  soul  found  nourishment,  rest,  and  exal- 
tation. He  left  no  ^^  Summa  Theologis."  What  he  be- 
lieved has  to  be  gathered  from  manifold  passages,  asso- 
ciated in  thought,  but  not  in  the  order  or  time  of 
composition,  which  are  distributed  through  his  writings. 
It  was  not  a  scheme  developed  by  himself  through  h^gical 
processes,  but  one  which  had  been  borne  in  upon  him, 
by  his  early  instruction,  by  his  affectionate  study  of  the 
Scripture,  and  by  his  high  meditation,  until  it  had  be- 
come a  part  of  his  life,  mingling  itself  in  inseparable 
union  with  all  that  was  best  in  his  experience  and  his 
hope.  One  might  almost  say  that,  the  authority  of  the 
Scripture  being  conserved,  the  practical  criterion  of  truth 
was  to  him  in  its  power  and  tendency  to  bring  man's 
spirit  nearer  to  God.  I  do  not  see  how  any  doctrine 
failing  to  do  this  could  have  got  sure  hold  on  his  mind. 
Because  the  doctrine  which  he  had  early  accepted,  as  in- 
terpreted  by  his  imagination  and  heart,  seemed  to  him 


296  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

signally  to  do  this,  he  held  and  loved  it  with  the  entire 
force  of  his  nature.  He  was  intensely,  though  not 
timidly,  conservatiye  of  it ;  and  he  looked  with  a  certain 
sensitive  jealousy,  born  of  a  deep  and  controlling  affec- 
tion, on  anything  which  might  tend  to  lower  its  dignity 
or  obscure  its  splendor  before  the  eyes  of  the  world. 

This  is  really  the  significance  of  the  title  which  I  have 
mentioned  as  affectionately  given  him,  '^  The  last  of  the 
Fathers ; "  while  Anselm,  on  the  other  hand,  though  the 
profoundest  theologian  of  his  time,  is  also  fairly  to  be  re- 
garded as  the  first,  and  among  the  greatest,  of  the  school- 
men. He  differed  from  Bernard  not  in  purpose  or  spirit, 
but  in  the  proportion  and  balance  of  his  powers,  the  acut- 
est  understanding  being  united  in  him  with  a  sensitive 
conscience,  and  a  heart  charged  with  profound  feeling. 
He  sought  always  to  give  an  account  to  the  rational 
nature  of  that  transcendent  Divine  system  which  was  to 
him  as  certain  as  the  earth,  while  vastly  grander  in  its 
substance  and  its  relations ;  in  whose  discovery  of  God  his 
heart  rejoiced.  As  the  example  of  a  sincere,  devout,  and 
most  educating  thinker,  along  lines  essentially  difficult 
and  new,  perhaps  no  one  in  history  is  more  eminent 
than  he,  whose  genius  we  certainly  cannot  equal,  but 
whose  piety  and  thoughtfulness  are  not  beyond  our 
eager  aspiration. 

In  Bernard  the  same  elements  were  combined,  but  with 
greater  preponderance  of  devout  feeling,  and  a  less  en- 
ergetic and  masterful  development  of  the  questioning 
and  constructive  understanding.  He  held  strongly  to 
what  was  established,  in  doctrine  as  in  institutions.  He 
accepted,  without  reserve,  the  system  of  Christianity  as 
it  had  come  to  him  from  the  past,  as  it  seemed  to  him 
set  forth  in  the  Scripture,  as  it  was  associated  with  the 
deepest  and  subtlest  longings  and  attainments  of  his 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  297 

spiritual  nature.  He  believed  it  because  he  felt  it.  He 
could  truly  say  of  it,  ^^AU  my  springs  are  in  thee;'' 
and  therefore  doubts  did  not  disturb  him,  even  efforts  to 
show  religion  reasonable  appeared  to  him  superfluous, 
if  not  indicative  of  a  too  daring  confidence  in  the  native 
mental  power  of  man.  Perhaps  he  was  not  as  patient 
toward  such,  or  as  sympathetically  considerate  of  them, 
as  he  might  well  have  been.  The  modern  tendency  cer- 
tainly does  not  move  in  a  line  with  his.  It  may  even  find 
much  in  his  attitude  antipathetic  with  its  own.  But  we 
have  to  recognize  facts  as  they  meet  us ;  and  it  is  as  such 
an  essential  conservative  in  his  whole  relation  to  the 
doctrine  which  had  quickened,  moulded,  and  exalted  his 
spirit,  that  he  asks  our  attention.  I  do  not  know  but 
this  adds  to  his  significance,  as  an  exponent  of  the  the- 
ological opinion  prevalent  in  his  time  among  men  like 
himself.  I  certainly  do  not  feel  that  it  detracts  from  the 
homage  always  due  him  for  his  fearless  sincerity. 

That  he  was  a  firm  and  fervent  supernaturalist,  in  his 
conception  of  religious  truth,  need  not  be  said.  It  would 
have  seemed  just  as  credible  to  him  that  man  had  built 
the  sun  and  stars  as  that  he  had  framed  the  Gospel  of 
Christ  out  of  fancies  and  myths;  as  credible  that  by 
human  ingenuity  the  sunshine  had  been  braided,  as  that 
from  will  or  wit  of  man  had  come  that  supernal  heavenly 
energy  which  lifted  him  sweetly  and  surely  toward 
Ood.  But  within  this  general  range  of  conception,  com- 
mon in  his  time,  and  common  with  Christian  disciples 
since,  he  had  his  own  place,  a  beautiful  and  high  place. 
Not  dryly  logical,  nor  on  the  other  hand  philosophically 
discursive,  the  warmth  of  his  heart,  and  the  imaginative 
glow  of  his  mind,  gave  light  and  color  to  all  his  system, 
and  made  it  so  essentially  noble  and  effulgent  that  it  con- 
tinually allures  our  study.     He  did  not   consciously 


1 


298  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUX  : 

clothe  fancies  with  authority ;  but  the  intaitiona  of  faiHi, 
or  what  appeared  auch,  were  eaaily  articulated  as  dogma. 
High  poetic  and  spiritual  conceptions  seemed  naturally 
invested  with  supernal  sanctions.  He  did  not  mistake 
reverie-mists  for  self-luminous  stars;  but  the  sphere  of 
truth  had  to  him  an  atmosphere  about  it  full  of  tints 
and  sunny  splendors,  in  contemplating  which  his  soul 
delighted,  and  by  which  the  truth  seemed  freshly  veri- 
fied. He  was,  if  we  may  express  it  in  a  sentence,  a  con- 
templative yet  a  most  practical  Mystic;  apprehending 
secret  sublimities  in  truth,  before  which  forms  of  words 
are  weak,  aud  thought  itself  innately  infirm ;  feeling  an 
occult  life  in  the  Christian  truth,  which  analysis  cannot 
grasp,  any  more  than  the  hand  can  clutch  the  sunbeam ; 
yet  preserved  from  extravagance  by  his  study  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, by  that  constant  activity  which  kept  his  mind 
alert  and  watchful,  and  by  that  earnest  Christian  love, 
and  that  eager  desire  to  bless  mankind,  which  kept  his 
heart  faithful  and  sound.  If  we  so  apprehend  him,  I 
think  he  is  before  us  in  his  general  position ;  and  further 
particular  examination  of  his  views  becomes  a  matter  of 
easy  study. 

The  Scriptures  were,  of  course,  supreme  with  him,  as 
read  in  the  common  Latin  version;  and  the  doctrine 
that  the  writers  of  the  Scripture  had  been  so  instructed, 
directed,  illumined  by  the  Divine  mind,  that  they  spoke 
with  entire  authority,  was  simply  the  premise  on  which 
his  entire  system  rested.^    But,  in  common  with  other 

^  Nam  qmdqaid  in  Scriptaris  Bpiritiuditer  sentiebat,  maxime  in  sUvis 
et  in  agris  meditando  et  orando  se  accepiaae  confitebatar ;  et  in  hoc  nulloa 
aliqnando  ae  magiatroa  haboiaae,  niai  quercua  et  fSigoa  jooo  illo  ano  gratios^ 
inter  araiooa  dicere  aolebat  .  .  .  Canonicaa  autem  Scriptoiaa  aimpUcit^ 
ao  Beriatim  Ubentiaa  ao  aepiua  legebat ;  neo  nllia  magia  qoam  ipearam 
Terbia  eaa  inteUigere  ae  dicebat,  et  qaidqnid  in  eii  diTinA  aibi  elnoebat 
TSiitatia  ant  Tirtntia,  in  prinuB  aibi  originiB  fonts  magifl^  qnam  in  dacur- 


AS  A   THE0L06UN.  299 

Mystics,  be  regarded  this  Divine  illuminatioii  as  not  con* 
fined  to  the  sacred  writers,  though  pre-eminent  in  them. 
He  conceived  a  real  though  a  subordinate  inspiration  to 
abide  in  the  mind  of  the  faithful  disciple,  especially  of 
such  as  were  called  to  great  trusts,  or  set  to  be  the  teach- 
ers of  others.  The  supernatural  element  was  always 
proximate  to  his  thought.  He  lived  in  it,  in  a  true 
sense ;  and  while  those  from  whose  pens  the  Scriptures 
had  come  had  authority  for  him,  the  present  witness 
of  the  Spirit  in  the  soul,  and  in  the  continuing  re- 
sponse to  the  truth  on  the  part  of  the  Church,  was 
also  an  immediate  Divine  fact  supplemental  to  this.  He 
would  not  have  said,  as  Ab^lard  said,  as  we  shall  see 
hereafter,  that  the  prophets  had  sometimes  failed  in  their 
gifts,  and  had  uttered  erroneous  things,  that  even  the 
Apostles  had  been  by  no  means  exempt  from  error.  But 
he  most  surely  and  practically  held  that  a  state  of  super- 
human exaltation  is  now  attainable,  in  which  the  mind, 
by  the  eye  of  contemplation,  once  closed  by  sin  but  now 
opened  by  grace,  transcends  the  finite,  discerns  intui- 
tively supernal  verities,  and  is  at  one  with  the  mind  of 
Ood.  Because  of  this  the  great  Fathers  of  the  Church 
had  for  him  an  autiiority  almost  co-ordinate  with  that  of 
Apostles ;  not  defined  by  the  number  and  weight  of  their 
arguments,  but  derived  from  that  intuition  of  Ood  which 
he  conceived  them  to  have  possessed.  And  because  of 
this  the  common  controlling  interpretation  of  the  Scrip- 
tures prevailing  in  the  Church  appeared  to  him  doubly 
warranted, — by  the  sacred  writings,  and  by  the  under- 

rentftms  ezpodtionnm  rvm  aapen  testobfttnr.  Suictos  tunen  et  ortho- 
dozos  earnm  expositores  hnmiliter  legena,  neqaaqaain  senrilniB  eoram  mot 
mama  sqnabat,  aed  sabjiciebat  fonnandos;  et  Testigiis  eonim  fideliter 
inhcrens,  sepe  de  fonte,  unde  illi  hauserant,  et  ipee  bibebat.— Qp^nii 
YiU  iL  cap.  z.  32,  roL  aeo.  ooL  2427. 


800  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

standing  of  them  equally  wrought  by  the  Holy  Ghost  in 
the  hearts  of  the  faithful.  The  office  of  reason  was  sub- 
ordinate, ancillary,  to  unfold  and  defend  the  substance 
of  the  truth  thus  certified  from  on  high  ;  and  an  inward 
illumination  of  the  spirit  in  man,  attained  in  the  rap- 
ture of  adoration,  was  necessary  in  his  view  to  a  full  and 
clear  understanding  of  the  Word. 

The  essential  meaning  of  that  Word  he  conceived  by 
no  means  to  lie  upon  the  surface,  but  to  be  so  involved 
within  the  letter  that  only  the  spiritual  mind  could  dis- 
cem  it.  The  modem  methods  of  philological  study  were 
unknown,  and  the  Bible  was  commonly  interpreted  either 
in  mechanical  accordance  with  ecclesiastical  tradition,  or 
in  this  freer,  more  emotional  way,  more  congenial  to 
devout  spirits.  Origen  had  encouraged  the  notion  of  a 
threefold  sense  in  the  sacred  Word.  Augustine  was  un- 
derstood to  have  made  it  fourfold ;  ^  others  had  pushed 
the  impalpable  distinctions  yet  further  than  this.  Ber- 
nard distinguished  three  different  yet  harmonious  mean- 
ings in  the  text  of  the  Scripture,  which  he  illustrates  in 

^  The  mdividaal  ought  then  to  portray  the  ideas  of  Holy  Scriptare  in  t 
threefold  manner  apon  his  own  soul,  in  order  that  the  simple  man  may  be 
edified  by  the  *' flesh,"  as  it  were,  of  the  Scripture,  for  so  we  name  the  ob- 
vious sense ;  while  he  who  has  ascended  a  certain  way  [may  be  edified]  by 
the  **  soul,"  as  it  were.  The  perfect  man,  again  [may  receive  edification], 
from  the  spiritual  law,  which  has  a  shadow  of  good  things  to  come.  For 
as  roan  consists  of  body,  soul,  and  spirit,  so  in  the  same  way  does  Scriptore^ 
which  has  been  arranged  to  be  given  by  God  for  the  salvation  of  men.  — 
Oriobk  :  De  PrineipiiSy  iv.  c.  1. 

All  that  Scripture,  therefore,  which  is  called  the  Old  Testament,  is 
handed  down  fourfold  to  those  who  desire  to  know  it ;  according  to  his- 
tory,  according  to  etiology,  according  to  analogy,  according  to  aUegory. 
•  .  .  AU  these  ways  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  His  apostles  used.  ...  In 
this  manner  are  they  dealt  with  who  earnestly  and  piously  seek  the  sense 
of  the  Scriptures  [being  carefully  shown  the  order  of  events,  the  causes  of 
deeds  and  words,  the  great  agreement  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  and 
the  great  secrets  under  the  figures].  —  AuousTim :  Dt  UHL  Ondtndif  iii 


AS  1   THBOLOGIIN.  301 

this  way  in  one  of  his  sermons :  the  soul  is  introduced 
by  Him  who  loves  and  leads  it,  first,  into  the  garden, 
which  represents  the  historical  sense  of  the  Word ;  next, 
into  the  store-rooms,  for  spices,  fruits,  and  wines,  which 
stand  figuratively  for  the  moral  sense  of  the  Scrip- 
ture, and  which  are  rich  in  provision  for  enjoyment  and 
for  food ;  finally,  into  the  bed-chamber,  which  is  the  fig- 
ure for  the  mystical  sense,  where  only  the  beloved  enter 
and  rest.^  The  distinction  was  as  evident  to  him  as 
were  the  several  departments  of  his  abbey,  and  as  famil- 
iar to  his  thought  as  those  were  to  his  eyes. 

Of  course  to  one  believing  in  this  essential  hiddenness 
of  the  deeper  import  of  the  Scriptures  the  way  was 
always  open  for  introducing  into  the  Word,  or  imposing 
upon  it,  his  own  conception  of  what  it  ought  to  contain, 
the  letter  becoming  elastic,  almost  fluent,  beneath  the 
touch  of  the  interpreting  -spirit.  What  appear  to  us 
unfounded  inferences,  extravagant  eccentricities  of  ex- 
position, in  mediaBval  teachers,  are  often  thus  to  be  ex- 
plained ;  and  this  was  a  danger  from  which  Bernard 
could  hardly  escape.  His  convictions  were  intense,  his 
fancy  was  fruitful,  his  mind  was  rich  in  imaginative 
suggestions,  while  the  very  stress  of  practical  activities 
amid  which  he  lived  gave  to  his  thought  a  keener  glow 
and  a  gladder  freedom  when  he  turned  to  interpret  the 
treasures  of  the  Scripture.  But  always  the  impulse  of  a 
devout  feeling  was  in  his  meditation  ;  and  whatever  one 
may  find  of  mystical  exposition  distributed  through  his 
sermons,  of  allegories  evolved  out  of  metaphors,  of  fanci- 
ful meanings  conveyed  into  obvious  images,  he  has 
always  a  practical  end.  in  view,  and  rarely  loses  his 
sobriety  and  dignity  of  mind.  One  cannot  conceive  of 
him,  for  example,  as  repeating  the  foolishness  of  one 

1  Opera,  voL  prim.,  Ser.  xcii.  De  DirersU,  coU.  2538-35. 


SOS  BBNIED  OF  GLAIBVAUX: 

who  found,  as  Hagenbach  reports,  an  inscription  of 
Christ  in  the  human  face;  the  eyes,  with  the  eye-r 
browB»  the  nose,  the  ear  and  the  mouth,  making  up  the 
signs  for  ^^  Homo  Dei/'  ^  Puerilities  like  these  could 
hardly  have  failed  to  seem  offensive  to  Bernard's  fervent 
thought,  and  to  his  genuine  though  rich  and  responsive 
moral  sensibility. 

But  his  conviction  of  a  subtile  mystical  sense  in  the 
Scripture  did  lead  him  with  emphasis  to  insist  upon 
this :  that  in  order  to  a  true  understanding  of  the  Word 
a  right  spiritual  temper  is  needed  in  man,  and  that  final 
illumination  as  to  its  meaning  is  only  to  be  reached 
through  purity  of  heart.  ^^Instruction  makes  men 
learned,"  he  says,  **  affection  [toward  the  truth]  makes 
them  wise..  The  sun  does  not  warm  all  whom  it  en- 
lightens; so  there  are  many  whom  a  wise  philosophy 
teaches  as  to  what  may  be  done,  while  it  does  not  set 
them  in  a  glow  to  do  it.  It  is  one  thing  to  know  of 
many  riches,  another  thing  to  possess  them;  and  it 
is  possession,  not  knowledge,  which  makes  one  rich." ' 
That  a  desiring  and  confiding  disposition  of  the  heart 
must  precede  the  apprehension  of  truth  (^^  Fides  prscedit 
intellectum  ")  was  as  truly  a  principle  with  Bernard  as  it 
had  been  with  Augustine  or  with  Anselm.  The  truth  of 
history,  or  of  science,  or  of  human  philosophy,  might  be 

^  Hist,  of  Doct,  vol.  u.  p.  248,  note.     Edin.  od..  1884. 

*  Inatractio  doctos  reddit,  affectio  sapientes.  Sol  non  omnea,  qoibos 
laoety  etiam  cale&cit ;  aic  Sapientia  multofli  qnoe  docet  quid  sit  faciendam, 
non  continno  etiam  accendit  ad  faciendam.  Alind  est  multaa  divitias 
acire,  alind  et  poaddere ;  nee  notitia  divitem  facit,  sed  poeaessto.  ...  0 
rent  qnietis  locua,  et  qnem  non  immerito  cubicnli  appellatione  oenaaerim ! 
in  quo  Deoa,  non  qnasi  turbatna  ira,  nee  velnt  distentna  eora  prospicitur ; 
aed  probatur  volnntaa  ejaa  in  eo  lx>na,  et  beneplaeena,  et  perfecta.  Visio 
iflta  non  tenet,  aed  ranlcet ;  inqnietam  cnriositatem  non  exdtat,  aed  aedat ; 
nee  fatigat  aensus,  aed  tranquillat.  Hie  vera  qnieacitor.  —  Opera^  vol. 
prim.,  Ser.  in  Cantica,  xziiL  ;  colL  2801'-S. 


A8  A  THBOIiOOUK.  808 

nnderBtood  without  a  particular  moral  preparation.  To 
the  cognition  and  reception  of  the  truths  of  religion, 
which  constitute  the  final  perfect  norm  of  thought,  there 
must  be  a  distinct  bent  of  the  spirit  toward  them ;  one 
must  thirst  for  Divine  wisdom,  as  well  as  for  righteous- 
ness, before  he  can  be  filled.  Anselm  expressed  in 
strongest  terms  what  seemed  to  him  the  proper  relation 
between  the  disposition  and  the  intellection  when  he 
said :  ^'I  do  not  seek  to  understand  in  order  that  I  may 
believe,  but  I  believe  in  order  that  I  may  understand ;  for 
unless  I  will  believe,  I  may  not  understand."  ^'  Bernard 
puts  it  in  another  form,  but  with  equal  emphasis :  *^  What," 
he  says,  ^  can  be  more  contrary  to  reason  than  the  effort 
to  transcend  reason  by  itself  ?  and  what  more  contrary 
to  faith  than  to  be  unwilling  to  believe  what  by  reason 
cannot  be  attained  ?  "  '  A  longing  after  Ood,  predispos- 
ing to  the  affectionate  acceptance  of  whatever  He  may 
declare,  giving  eyes  to  the  soul,  leading  to  the  faith 
which  is  after  all  but  as  the  luminous  shadow  and 
prophecy  of  glorious  things  to  be  revealed,^  —  this  was 
wholly  indispensable  in  the  view  of  Bernard  to  the  true 
perception  of  spiritual  things,  to  any  real  insight  into 
Divine  thoughts  and  plans.    Devotion  must  prepare  for 

^  Non  tento,  Domine,  penetrare  altitadinem  tiiam ;  quia  nulkteniu 
oomparo  illi  ioteUectnm  meam ;  aed  desidero  aliqnatenna  intelligere  veri- 
tatam  toam,  qaam  credit  et  amat  oor  meom.  Neqne  eniin  qimro  inteUi- 
gore,  nt  credam ;  sed  credo,  nt  inteUigam.  Nam  ac  hoc  credo  quia  niii 
eredideroy  non  intelligam.  —  Pro9logion9  cap.  i 

*  Dam  paratuB  est  de  omnibus  redden  rationem,  etiam  qim  snnt  supra 
Xfttionem,  et  eontn  ntionem  pnBsnmit,  et  contre  fidem.  Quid  enim  magia 
eontre  rationem,  qnam  ntione  ntionem  oonari  tTansoendere  t  Et  qnid 
magiB  contra  fidem,  qnam  credere  nolle,  qnidqnid  non  possit  ntione  at* 
tingere  t  .  .  .  Academicomm  sint  istse  sstimationes,  quorum  est  dubitare 
de  omnibus,  scire  nihil.  —  Opera,  vol.  prim.,  Trect.  de  Error.  AWL,  coll. 

1442, 1450. 

•  Ser.  iL  in  Epiph.,  col.  1788;  Ser.  xzxL  in  Cantica,  ooL  2868. 


804  BERNARD  OF  GLAIRVAUX  : 

fraitful  meditation.    Devout  affections  were  the  wings 
on  which  the  soul  must  ascend  toward  the  Highest. 

He  naturally  distinguishes,  therefore,  three  acts  or 
states  of  the  mind  in  the  progressive  attainment  of  truth. 
The  first  of  these  is  Opinion ;  which  follows  probability, 
and  is  always  uncertain;  swinging  like  a  pendulum 
between  opposite  arguments ;  never  able  to  reach  entire 
certainty,  or  to  afford  sure  support  to  the  soul.  The 
second  is  Faith,  which  accepts  and  affirms,  on  what  to  it 
is  authoritative  testimony,  truth  which  as  yet  it  cannot 
for  itself  demonstrate,  cannot  indeed  altogether  under- 
stand ;  the  full  meaning  of  which  lies  before  it  under  a 
veil,  involved  in  what  it  accepts,  but  not  yet  clearly  ex- 
pressed. This,  of  course,  is  wholly  different  from  Opin- 
ion. It  believes,  where  the  other  discusses ;  and  it  holds 
that  Grod  Himself  is  suspected  when  any  one  is  unwilling 
to  receive  as  true  what  has  not  yet  been  ascertained  by 
reason.  ^  Then  comes  the  '^  Intellectus,"  the  clear  and 
full  mental  apprehension  of  the  truth  which  Opinion  has* 
doubted,  but  which  Faith  has  affirmed.  This  not  only  has 
certainty  concerning  the  truth,  but  it  has  the  particular 
and  comprehensive  personal  knowledge  of  that.  In  both 
these  respects  it  differs  from  Opinion.  In  the  latter 
it  differs  from  Faith,  and  is  superior  to  it.  The  perfect 
beatitude  of  the  mind  is  reached  when  what  had  been 
certain  to  Faith  is  fully  presented  to  intellectual  appre- 
hension. Opinion  has  never  more  than  the  probable 
likeness  of  truth ;  Faith  has  the  truth,  but  as  a  sealed 
treasure,  not  yet  opened.  The  final  state  is  that  in 
which  the  mind  reaches  the  certain  and  absolute  knowl- 

^  Cam  ea  ratione  nititar  explorare,  quae  pia  mens  fidei  viTacitate  ap- 
prehendit.  Fides  pioram  credit,  non  diacutit.  Sed  iste  Deum  habens 
■aspeotam,  credere  non  vult,  nisi  quod  prius  ratione  diBcnaserit  —  Opera^ 
Tol.  prim.,  epist.  cocxxxviii.  ;  col.  681. 


AS  A   THEOLOGIAN.  305 

edge  of  invisible  things.  So  Opinion  can  never  properly 
contradict  Faith,  or  call  in  question  what  it  affirms. 
Whenever  it  positively  asserts,  it  is  rash;  whenever 
Faith  hesitates,  it  is  weak.  The  latter  is  the  voluntary 
and  sure  pre-libation  of  that  which  hereafter  is  to  be 
completely  disclosed;  and  the  spiritual  apprehension 
of  truth  —  or,  as  we  should  perhaps  say,  the  intuitive 
and  complete  understanding  of  it  —  only  opens  the  con- 
tents of  what  Faith  had  accepted  in  the  casket.  It 
explores  and  maps  out  the  realms  which  Faith  from  the 
distance  has  as  surely  but  more  dimly  seen.^ 

This  is  the  sequence  of  spiritual  processes  which 
Bernard  recognizes  as  naturally  connected  with  the  re- 
ception of  Divine  truth  by  the  human  mind;  and,  of 
course,  it  is  the  final  state  which  he  supremely  aspires 
to  reach,  —  the  state  of  immediate  discernment  of  the 
Invisible,  by  the  purified  heart  and  the  devoutly  contem« 
plative  mind.  Consideration,  on  its  highest  level,  is  to 
him  the  same  with  Contemplation,  though  at  times  he 
makes  a  distinction  between  them ;  and  this  Contempla- 
tion is  the  true  and  sure  intuition  of  the  truth,  the 
immediate  and  undoubting  discernment  of  it. '    Angels 

^  Qooram  intellectus  rationi  innititar,  fides  anctoritati,  opinio  sola  yeri 
nmilitudine  se  tuetnr.  Habent  ilia  duo  certain  yeritatem ;  sed  fides  claosam 
et  involatam,  intelligentia  nndam  et  manifeatam ;  caeternm  opinio,  ceiti 
nihil  habena,  yeram  per  yerisimilia  qnerit  potioa,  quam  apprehendit  .  .  . 
Opinio,  ai  habet  assertionem,  temeraria  est ;  fides,  si  habet  haesitationem, 
infirma  est ;  item  intellectns,  si  signata  fidei  tentet  imimpere,  repntatnr 
eflfractor,  scrutator  majestatis.  .  .  .  Fides  est  yoluntaria  quiedam  et  certa 
pmlibatio  necdum  propalatn  yeritatis.  Intellectns  est  rei  ciguscnmque 
invisibilis  oerta  et  manifesta  notitia.  Opinio  est  quasi  pro  yero  habere 
aliquid,  quod  falsum  esse  nescias.  .  .  .  Nil  supererit  ad  beatitudinem, 
cam  qu0  jam  oerta  sunt  nobis  fide,  emnt  nque  et  nuda.  —  OperOj  yol. 
prim.,  "De  Consideratione,"  lib.  y.,  cap.  8,  col.  1075. 

*  Jnzta  qnem  sensum  potest  contemplatio  quidem  definiri,  yeros  certoa- 
qoa  intoitoa  animi  de  qoacnmque  n,  siye  apprehenaio  yen  non  dubia.    Con' 

20 


806  bebnjlbd  of  claxbyauz: 

have  this ;  not  studying  the  Creator  in  His  works,  but 
beholding  all  things  in  the  Word,  having  direct  perception 
of  the  primal  ideas  in  the  mind  of  the  Eternal.  Man  maj 
attain  it  in  a  measure,  if  not  with  the  angelic  fulness. 
Not  so  much  by  gradual  ascent  is  it  to  be  reached  as  by 
sudden  exaltation,  in  a  superlative  rapture,  like  that  of 
Saint  Paul  when  caught  up  to  the  heavens.  ^*  Excessus,^ 
not  ^^  Ascensus,"  had  been  his  experience.  It  might,  in  a 
measure,  be  that  of  others.  The  soul  might  here  gain 
heavenly  pinions,  lifting  it  above  solicitations  or  shadows 
of  sensible  things,  and  making  it  partaker,  in  a  degree, 
of  the  inheritance  of  angelic  purity.^ 

Bernard  had  had  no  vision  like  the  Apostle's,  attended 
by  an  evident  glory ;  but  he  felt  that  he  had  had  visits 
of  the  Son  of  Ood,  the  Divine  reality  of  which  had  been 
shown  by  the  wonderful  new  force  and  joy  which  came 
to  pervade  him,  the  facility  and  abundance  with  which 
he  afterward  brought  forth  in  his  life  the  fruits  of  the 
Spirit.^   They  were  to  him  as  animating  breaths,  coming 

dderatio  antein,  inteiua  ad  invefltigandiim  OQgitEtio»  vel  intentio  ■nxmi 
vettigantiB  Teram.  Qaanquani  solebant  amlMS  pro  iiiTioem  iodifferenter 
Qsnrpftri.    Opera^  vol.  prim.,  *'  De  CoxiBid.y"  lib.  ii.,  cap.  2,  ool.  1024. 

^  Sancta  aliqua  et  vehementi  oogitatione  anima  a  semetipaa  abripitnr ; 
ci  tamen  eonsqiie  mente  aeoedat  et  avolety  nt  et  hunc  oommiinem  tranaeeiidat 
Qflom  et  conaaetudinem  oogitandL  .  .  .  Bona  mora,  qii«  vitam  non  anfart) 
aed  transfert  in  melina ;  bona,  qaa  non  coipaa  oadit,  aed  anima  aaUeratiir. 
Vol.  prim.,  Ser.  in  Cantica,  lit  ool.  2980. 

At  omnium  maximua,  qni  spreto  ipao  nan  renim  et  aensnam,  qnantom 
qnidem  hnmann  fragilitati  fas  eat,  non  aacensoriia  gradibna,  aed  inopinatia 
exoeasibna,  avolare  interdnm  contemplando  ad  ilia  aublimia  oonaneTit.  Ad 
hoc  nltimom  genna  illoa  pertinere  reor  exceaaoa  PaolL  Szoeasoa,  non 
aacenaoa ;  nam  raptnm  potina  foiaae,  qnam  aacendiaae  ipae  ae  perhibeL  — 
Opera,  rol,  prim.,  '*  De  Conaideratione,"  lib.  v.  cap.  2,  ooL  107S. 

*  Fateor  et  mibi  adrentaaae  Yerbam,  in  insipientia  dioo,  et  plnriea. 
Cnmqne  aaipioa  intraverit  ad  me,  non  aenai  aliquotiea  cam  intraTit.  .  .  . 
QoBria  igitnr,  cum  ita  aint  omnino  inveatigabilea  viie  qua,  undo  adeaae 
norim  t    Yiymn  et  efficax  eat ;  mozqne  at  intoa  venit,  ezpeigefedt  dormi- 


AS  A  THBOLOGIAM.  807 

forth  from  within  the  gates  of  pearl.  They  were  pro- 
phetic, in  the  exaltation  and  secret  illumination  which 
they  brought  to  his  spirit,  of  the  immediate  and  perfect 
insight  into  all  Divine  things  which  he  surely  expected 
to  reach.  In  his  sermons,  he  specifies,  in  his  mystical 
way,  three  kisses  of  the  soul :  the  first,  of  the  feet  of  Ood, 
when  the  soul  embraces  his  mercy  and  truth ;  the  second, 
of  the  hands  of  Ood,  when  it  turns  with  its  might  to  His 
service  in  good  works,  or  gratefully  receives  from  Him 
the  gift  of  virtues ;  the  third,  upon  His  mouth,  when  with 
celestial  desire  it  aspires  to  the  hidden  joys  of  the  most 
intimate  communion  with  His  mind.^  In  this  highest 
state,  the  soul  collecting  itself  within  itself,  and  divinely 
assisted,  abstracting  itself  from  all  human  things,  arises 
to  direct  contemplation  of  Ood.  Its  state  is  tben  of 
certitude  and  of  vision,  tiie  nearest  approach  to  heavenly 
levels.* 

This  being  Bemard^s  view  of  the  sources  of  Christian 
knowledge,  and  of  the  means  of  highest  attainment  in 
this,  if  we  go  on  to  consider  the  particular  doctrines  which 
he  accepted  as  conveyed  by  the  Scriptures,  attested  by  the 
general  consciousness  of  Ohristians,  and  verified  by  his 
own  experience,  we  shall  find  them,  I  think,  profound 

teatem  •niTn«n  meam;  morit,  et  mollmty  et  ynlnemTit  oor  meam,  qaoniam 
dnmm  Upideamq^ae  erat,  et  male  aanmn.  •  .  .  Ita  igitar  intrans  ad  me 
aliquoties  Yerbnm  sponsiu,  nollis  unqaam  introitam  saum  indidis  in- 
notesoere  fecit,  non  voce,  non  specie,  non  Inoessa.  •  .  .  £z  discuMione 
siTe  redaxgatione  oocoltorum  meorun  admiiatus  aam  proftinditatem  sapi- 
entitt  qua ;  et  ex  quantnlacumqae  emendatione  monim  meoram  expertua 
mm  bonitatem  manauetadinis  ejus ;  et  ex  mioyatioiie  ao  refonnatione 
ajniitna  mentia  men,  id  est  interioris  hominis  mei,  percepi  ntcumqae 
spedem  decoria  ejua.     YoL  prim.,  Ser.  in  Cantica,  L.  xxir.  6;  coUi 

si25-as. 

>  Ser.  Be  Divenia,  Ixxxvii.  ooL  22519 ;  In  Cantica,  iv.  coL  2681. 

*  SpecnlatiTa  eat  conaideratio  se  in  se  coUigena,  et,  quantum  divinitua 
a4iu^&toff  nbua  hnmania  eximena  ad  oontemplaadnm  Deum.  Vol.  prim., 
*•  De  Conaid.,''  lib.  t.  cap.  2,  ocd.  1074. 


808  BEBNABD  OF  GLAXBYAUZ '. 

and  lofty,  whether  we  wholly  agree  with  them  or  not,  and 
shall  discern  the  key  to  his  character  and  the  law  of.  his 
life  in  the  system  which  thus  opened  before  him  in  wide 
expanse,  with  what  to  him  appeared  a  truly  supernal 
splendor. 

As  thorough  a  realist  in  his  philosophy  as  Augustine 
had  been,  he  considered  human  nature  to  exist  indepen- 
dently  of  persons,  the  species  to  precede  the  individual ; 
and  from  this  nature  original  righteousness  had  de- 
parted, into  this  species  disorder  and  corruption  had 
been  introduced,  by  the  sin  of  him  in  whom  it  all  was  at 
first  incarnated.  Since  that,  the  supreme  bias  of  the 
soul  towai'd  God,  which  had  been  the  primal  glory  of 
man,  had  become  a  dreadful  aversion  from  Him,  which 
was  itself  sinful,  a  proper  object  of  Divine  condemnation, 
and  out  of  which  proceeded  the  infidelities,  the  lusts,  and 
all  wickedness  of  mankind.  ^^  God,"  he  says,  ^^  is  the 
true  life  of  the  soul,  aud  that  which  separates  between 
them  is  nothing  else  but  the  vice  of  the  soul,  which  is 
sin.''  ^  ^'  The  original  sin,"  he  says  again,  ^'  is  the  great- 
est of  all,  that  which  we  derive  from  Adam,  in  whom  we 
all  sinned,  by  roason  of  whom  we  all  die.  This  so  af- 
fects the  entire  human  race  that  no  one  escapes  it.  It 
so  affects  each  person,  from  the  first  to  the  last,  that  the 
poisonous  principle  is  diffused  throughout  each  from 
foot  to  head.  In  every  period  of  life  it  appears,  from  the 
day  of  one^s  birth  to  the  day  of  his  burial.  It  is  the  oc- 
casion of  the  miseries  of  life,  infecting  the  nature  in 
every  individual,  and  becoming  the  source  of  personal 
transgressions.  A  heavy  yoke  indeed  it  is  which  comes 
thus  upon  all  the  children  of  Adam."  ^ 

The    careful    and    searching   pyschological    analysis 

1  VoL  prim.,  Ser.  in  PftaL  x.,  col.  1885. 
s  lUd.,  Ser.  in  Fem  iv.  ooU.  1941-42. 


AS  A  THEOLOOtAK.  809 

which  came  later,  appearing  for  example  in  Thomas 
Aquinas,  is  not  evident  in  Bernard.  He  simply  accepted 
what  seemed  to  him  the  obvious  facts  in  the  moral  condi- 
tion of  man,  his  loss  of  the  primitive  supernatural  gifts, 
his  inward  severance  from  his  Author,  the  presence 
in  him  by  nature  of  an  evil  selfishness  of  disposition 
and  desire,  vicious  in  itself,  and  prolific  of  vices ;  and 
though  he  recognized  a  certain  imperfect  freedom  of  the 
will  after  sin,^  he  quite  understood  that  no  one  through 
it  could  extricate  himself  from  the  dominion  of  evil,  or 
from'  the  suffering  which  must  properly  follow.  His 
strongest  words  and  most  vivid  images  cannot  surpass, 
if  even  they  equal,  his  inner  conception  of  the  essential 
moral  corruption  of  the  nature  of  man  involved  in  the 
Fall.  The  doctrine  that  the  only  vital  connection  be- 
tween the  sin  of  Adam  and  that  of  his  posterity  was 
in  the  fact  that  he  furnished  the  example  which  they 
followed,  or  the  subsequent  doctrine  of  Ab^lard  that 
what  had  come  from  the  first  man  to  his  descend- 
ants was  not  properly  sin,  but  in  effect  its  penal  con- 
sequence,—  neither  of  these  could  satisfy  the  intenser 
and  deeper  conviction  of  Bernard.  Man,  to  him,  ap- 
peared separated  from  God  by  an  evil  self-will,  bom 
within  him,  which  would  extinguish  if  it  could,  for  its 
freer  gratification,  the  Divine  character  and  life;  of 
which  everything  vile  and  savage  on  earth  is  the  nat- 
ural outcome ;  for  which  tlie  punitive  fires  of  the  future 
are  but  the  just  and  certain  recompense;  which  being 
itself  expelled  leaves  for  man  no  more  hell.'' 

^  Epist  Izix.  col.  219  ;  Tract,  de  Gratia,col.  1381,  ei  al. 

*  In  corde  duplex  est  lepra ;  propria  voluntas,  et  proprinm  consUinm. 
Toluntatem  dico  propriani,  qua  non  est  communis  cum  Deo  et  hominibasi 
aed  nostra  tantum';  quando  quod  yoUimus,  non  ad  honorom  Dei,  non  ad 
QtOitatem  fntmm,  sed  propter  nosmetipaos  facimna,  non  intendentes  placera 
Peo  et  prodesae  fratribua,  sed  aatisfaoere  propriis  motilms  aoimoram.    Bm 


810  BIBMAED  OF  GLAIBTAUX  : 

But  over  against  this  central  and  appalling  debase- 
ment of  human  nature,  stood,  in  his  view,  that  measure- 
less and  inestimable  grace  of  God  bj  which  men  are 
assisted  to  rise  again  to  a  Divine  virtue,  and  to  gain  sal- 
vation. According  to  his  conception  of  it,  this  grace 
worked  through  the  will  of  the  recipient,  not  against  it, 
while  it  was  still  a  prevenient  grace,  coming  before 
man's  effort  for  it,  inspiring  good  thoughts,  exciting 
good  desires,  and  so  uniting  itself  with  the  perverse  will 
in  man  that  tliis  should  consent  to  and  not  resist  it; 
the  whole  beginning  of  salvation,  as  well  as  its  fulfilment, 
being  thus  from  Ood,  while  the  will  in  man  was  not 
superseded  or  mechanically  overpowered,  but  inwardly, 
spiritually  transformed.^  That  this  grace  of  God  was  in- 
visibly conveyed  to  men  through  the  sacraments  of  Bap- 
tism and  the  Lord's  Supper,  Bernard  certainly  did  not 
doubt.  He  clearly  sets  forth  his  high  estimate  of  these, 
and  for  himself  would  add  to  them  another,  that  of 

enim  adTersiiB  Deum  inimicitias  exercens  6St»  et  guemun  eradefiaamam. 
Quid  enim  odit,  aat  ponit  Deua  pneter  propriam  volantatem?  Ceaaet 
▼olnntaa  propria,  et  infemua  non  erit.  •  .  .  Nemini  qui  eit  in  propria 
Toluntate,  posset  nniverana  mandns  sufficere.  Nunc  aatem  et  ipautn, 
qnantom  in  ipsa  eat,  Deom  perimit  volnntas  propria.  Omnino  enim  veUet 
Denm  peccata  ana  aat  yindicare  non  posse,  ant  noUe,  ant  ea  neseire.  Yalt 
eigo  enm  non  ease  Denm.  .  .  .  Hnc  eat  cmdelii  beatia,  fera  peanma, 
lapaciBsimA  Inpa,  et  le«na  ssvisaima.  —  Opera,  toI.  prim.,  Ser.  liL  in 
temp.  Res.,  colL  1971-72. 

^  Porro  dno  mibi  sunt  necessaiia,  doeeri  ao  juvari.  •  .  .  Quid  igttar 
agit,  ais,  liberom  arbitrinm  t  Breviter  respondeo:  Salvator.  ToUe  liberam 
arbitriam,  et  non  erit  quod  salvetur ;  toUe  gratiam,  non  erit  unde  aalvetur. 
Opus  hoc  sine  daobus  effici  non  potest :  uno  a  quo  fit ;  altero  cm,  vel  in 
quo  fit.  Deus  auctor  est  salutis,  liberum  arbitrinm  tantum  capaz  ;  nee 
dare  iUam,  nisi  Deus;  nee  capere  yalet,  nisi  liberum  arbitrinm.  Quod 
eigo  a  solo  Deo,  et  soU  datur  libero  arbitrio ;  tam  absque  consensu  ease  [or 
elBci]  non  potest  aocipientis,  quam  absque  gratia  dantis.  Consantire  enim 
salvari  est.  .  .  .  Non  enim  est  consensus,  nisi  volnntarius.  Ubi  eigo 
consensus,  ibi  voluntas.  Porro  ubi  voluntas,  ibi  libertaa. — OperUf  toL 
prim.,  Tiaet  de  Gratia  et  Lib.  Arb.,  oolL  18S6-l$e7. 


▲8  ▲  THEOLOGIAN.  811 

washing  the  disciples'  feet.^  But  the  office  of  all  these 
was,  and  their  beautiful  virtue,  to  introduce  the  soul  to 
the  clear  apprehension  and  the  living  appropriation  of 
Christ  the  Lord,  and  of  God  in  Him ;  and  while  no  one 
was  to  reject  them,  or  to  think  lightly  of  them,  neither 
was  any  one  to  rest  passively  upon  them,  or  to  feel  him- 
self secure  by  reason  of  them.  It  must  be  evident  to 
all  contemplating  his  life,  that  he  relied  largely  on  the 
preaching  of  the  truth  with  an  intelligent  understand- 
ing of  it,  with  purity  of  spirit  and  earnestness  of  pur- 
pose, and  with  a  life  illustrating  the  word,  as  a  chief 
means  and  vehicle  of  the  Divine  grace.  It  formed, 
to  his  mind,  a  threefold  cord  not  easily  broken,  to  lift 
men  from  the  prison-house  of  sin,  and  to  exalt  them 
toward  heavenly  realms,  when  one  thinks  rightly,  speaks 
worthily,  and  confirms  his  utterance  by  his  life ; '  and  to 
such  work  his  own  soul  was  given  with  a  zeal  that  knew 
no  pause  or  limit 

1  Nam  ut  de  Temissione  qaotidianomm  minime  dabitemns,  habemiu 
qns  flacmnentam,  pedum  ablationem.  .  .  .  Aliqaid  igitar  latet  qaod 
oeeeBtarium  est  ad  salutem,  qaando  sine  eo  nee  ipae  Petros  partem  haberet 
in  regno  Christi  et  D^  —  Optra,  yol.  prim.,  Ser.  in  Coena  Dom.,  col. 
1950. 

*  Kt  est  ftmicnlus  triplex,  qui  dificile  rampitur,  ad  eztnhendaa  animaa 
de  caioere  diaboli,  et  tnJiendaa  post  se  ad  r^;na  ooolestia,  si  recte  sentias^ 
d  digne  pvoloquaria,  si  Tivendo  confirmes.  —  Opera,  Ser.  in  Cantica,  ZTi.  2, 
coL  2748. 

Unde  patas  in  toto  orbe  tanta,  et  tam  snbita  fidei  lax.  Did  de  pradicato 
Jesu  ?  .  .  .  Monstrabat  omnibus  lucemam  super  candelabrum,  annuntians 
in  omni  loco  Jesnro,  et  hunc  crucifixum.  .  .  .  Quid  ita  exercitatos  reparat 
sensoB,  Tirtntes  roborat,  yegetat  mores  bonce  atqne  bonestos,  castas  fovet 
affectiones  f  Aridus  est  omnia  anime  dbus,  si  non  oleo  isto  infunditur ; 
indpidus  eat,  d  non  hoc  sale  conditur.  ...  Siquidem  cum  noraino  Jesum, 
bominem  mihi  propono  mitem  et  hnmilem  oorde,  benignum,  sobrium,  cas- 
tmn,  misericordem,  et  omni  denique  bonestate  ac  sanctitate  oonspicnum, 
comdemque  ipsum  Deum  omnipotentem,  qui  sno  me  et  exemplo  sanet,  et 
loboret  a^jntoria  Hibc  omnia  simul  mibi  sonant  cum  insonuerit  JesQ8b 
— C)Mrvs  Bar.  in  Caatioa,  st.  %  ooU.  2744-2745. 


n 


812  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

The  effect  of  the  operation  of  Divine  grace,  in  the 
mind  darkened  and  disordered  by  alienation  from  God, 
was  to  be  looked  for,  in  Bernard's  contemplation,  in  a 
vital  and  thorough  transformation  of  the  spirit,  so  that 
it  should  see,  love,  and  cling  to  the  things  Divine,  and 
should  rise  to  a  true  and  holy  fellowship  with  the  EHier- 
nal.  It  was  to  be  attended,  as  he  knew  it  to  be,  by  in- 
ward peace,  a  deep  and  tranquil  satisfaction  of  the  soul 
in  Him  from  whom  its  life  had  come.  Indeed,  he  ex- 
pected an  immediate  individual  assurance  of  faith  to  at- 
tend it,  such  as  theologians  have  been  commonly  shy  of 
demanding.  **  If  thou  believest,"  he  says,  "  that  thy 
sins  cannot  be  abolished  except  by  Him  against  whom 
alone  thou  hast  sinned,  and  upon  whom  sin  cannot  fall, 
thou  doest  well ;  but  add  to  it  also  that  thou  shalt  be- 
lieve this,  that  thy  sins  have  been  forgiven  to  thee 
through  Him.  This  is  the  testimony  which  the  Holy 
Spirit  utters  in  thy  heart,  saying,  ^  Thy  sins  are  for- 
given thee.'  For  He  forgives  sin.  He  confers  merit; 
and  He,  none  the  less,  adds  the  reward."  ^  All  vicis- 
situdes of  life,  all  present  experiences  of  pain  or  of 
gladness,  were  as  nothing  to  Bernard,  if  l^is  inward 
assurance  of  Divine  forgiveness,  acceptance,  and  prom- 
ise, were  present  in  his  soul.  To  attain  this  in  him- 
self, to  impart  it  to  others,  was  the  supreme  aim  of  his 
life.  Anselm  had  been  wont  to  say,  as  I  have  reminded 
you,  that  if  there  were  presented  to  him,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  hatefulness  of  sin,  on  the  other  hand,  infernal 

^  Ideoque  si  credis  peccata  tua  non  posse  deleri  nisi  ab  eo  cni  soli  pec* 
casti,  et  in  qnem  peccatiim  non  cadit,  bene  facis;  sed  adde  adhac  ut  et  hoc 
credas,  quia  per  ipsnm  tibi  peccata  donantur.  Hoc  est  testimoniam  quod 
perhibet  in  corde  tno  Spiritns  sanctos,  dicens  :  Dimissa  snnt  tibi  peccata 
tua.  .  .  .  Ipse  enim  peccata  condonat,  ipse  donat  merita,  et  pnemia 
nihilominoB  ipse  redonat.  —  Opera,  Ser.  i.  in  Annnn.  B.  Hario,  roL  prinui 
coU.  2094-95 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  813 

pains,  and  be  were  constrained  to  take  one  or  the  other, 
he  would  choose  the  hell-fire  before  the  sin.^  Such 
would  certainly  have  been  the  choice  of  Bernard ;  and 
no  one  can  doubt  that  he  would  rather  have  aided  to 
make  one  man  holy  than  to  make  all  the  millions  of 
mankind  rich  and  powerful,  skilful  or  famous. 

That  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  the  Divine  and  human 
natures  were  united  in  one  Person,  one  cannot  imagine 
that  it  ever  occurred  to  him  to  doubt.     It  had  been  the 
sovereign  idea  of  his  childhood.     It  was  to  him  the 
foundation-stone  of  the  whole  Church-system,  vital  and 
august,  in  which  the  life  of  his  soul  was  enshrined.    He 
found  it  in  the  Scriptures,  as  he  read  and  understood 
them.    His  inner  experience  appeared  absolutely  to  certify 
of  the  fact ;  and  his  hopes  for  the  future  rested  upon  it. 
While  he   felt,   therefore,  the    tenderness  and  frater- 
nal sympathy  of  the  Lord  who  shone  illusti*ious  in  the 
Gospels,  he  felt  also  the  power,  authority,  and  virtue 
which  belonged  to  Him  as  Divine,  and  which  made  Him 
the  true  and  only  mediator  between  the  sinner  in  his 
condemnation  and  the  infinite  God,  against  whom  he 
had  sinned.     The  whole  analogy  of  the  faith,  as  well 
as   the   testimonies   which  he   found  in  himself,  con- 
ducted him  without  question  or  pause  to  this  view  of 
Christ. 

On  the  work  of  Atonement  accomplished  by  Christ 
he  held  the  view  generally  accepted  before  Anselm, 
which  contemplated  in  that  the  deliverance  of  man  from 
the  dominion  of  Satan.  To  this  Prince  of  fallen  angels 
man,  since  the  Fall,  was  held  to  have  been  in  retributive 
bondage.  The  problem  solved  in  the  Incarnation  and 
the  Passion  of  the  Lord  had  been  to  extricate  the 
penitent  soul  from  this  yoke  of  infernal  subjection.    It 

1  Eadmer,  Vita  S.  Anselmi,  lib.  ii.  p.  16,  D. 


814  BERNARD  OF  CIAIRTAUX: 

was  the  right  which  Satan  had  acquired  to  the  man 
whom  sin  had  brought  into  deadly  fellowship  with  him- 
self, which  was  cancelled  by  the  cross.  In  writing 
against  Ab^Iard,  Bernard  draws  a  sharp  distinction 
between  a  right  properly  acquired,  and  a  right  unjustly 
usurped,  yet  justly  permitted.^  The  latter  he  ascribed 
to  the  Devil,  under  God,  as  great  Church  Fathers  had 
done  before  him ;  and  so  the  Lord,  taking  upon  Him  the 
sin  of  the  world,  had  suffered  under  the  power  of  the 
Devil,  in  place  of  man ;  the  Head  making  a  recompense 
for  the  members ;  the  Son  of  God  for  those  whom  He 
would  make  His  brethren  in  love  and  peace.  God  bad 
not  required  the  death  of  His  Son,  but  had  accepted  it 
when  offered  as  the  ground  of  forgiveness,  in  His  desire 
for  man's  salvation.  ^ 

Anselm's  prof ounder  theory  of  the  Atonement  had  been 
published,  as  far  as  anything  then  was  published,  years 
before ;  having  been  completed  among  the  sunny  Italian 
hills  in  the  summer  days  of  a.  d.  1098.  That  theory  has 
had,  as  I  need  not  remind  you,  an  immense  influence  on 
the  thought  of  the  Church  in  subsequent  time,  but  it 
seems  to  have  made  only  a  slight  impression,  even  on 
the  minds  sympathetic  with  its  author,  at  the  beginning. 
It  was,  I  conceive,  too  solidly  encountered  by  the  state  of 
mind  which  Bernard  represented,  which  had  been  formed 
under  teachings  like  those  of  Augustine  and  Gregory, 
of  Origen,  Ambrose,  and  Leo  the  Great.    In  the  view  of 

Anselm,  the  Atonement  was  made  necessary  by  the  fact 

• 

^  Hoc  ei^  dtaboli  qnoddam  in  liomineni  jaa,  etsi  non  jure  aeqnisitam, 
aed  neqaiter  nsorpatum  ;  juste  tamen  penmssmn.  Sic  itaqne  homo  juste 
captimB  tenebatnTy  at  tamen  nee  in  faomine,  nee  in  diabolo  ilia  esset  jos- 
UHk,  aed  in  Dea  —  Opent,  vol.  prim.,  Tract  de  Error.  AMlardi,  col.  1454. 

*  Non  requisirit  Deos  Pater  sanguinem  Filii,  aed  tamen  acceptavit  ob> 
latum ;  non  tangninem  sitiens,  aed  aalatem,  quia  aalna  erat  in  aangnine.  -^ 
iMd,  vol  prim.,  eoL  1461. 


▲8  A  THBOLOOUN.  815 

that  sin  had  deprived  God  of  the  honor  which  was  due 
Him,  and  upon  the  maintenance  of  which  the  order  and 
beauty  of  the  uniyerse  depend.  God  cannot  properly 
leave  sin  unpunished,  or  it  would  have  a  larger  liberty 
than  righteousness  has.  The  sinner  cannot  make  satis- 
faction to  the  Divine  order  by  a  subsequent  repentance, 
and  by  doing  afterward  what  he  should  have  done 
always ;  nor  can  an  angel  do  it  for  him.  Therefore  God 
became  man  in  Christ,  and  voluntarily  laid  down  His 
sinless  life  in  a  supreme  sacrifice,  which  honors  God 
more  than  sins  have  dishonored  Him,  and  on  account  of 
which  punishment  is  remitted  to  those  whom  Christ  pre- 
sents for  Divine  acceptance.  He  entirely  rejected  the 
notion  that  Satan  had  any  right  over  man,  since  God 
owed  him  nothing  but  punishment,  and  man  nothing  ex- 
cept to  conquer  him ;  and  whatever  was  required  of  man 
was  due  to  God,  not  to  the  Devil.^  How  largely  this 
teaching  has  instructed  and  moulded  the  mind  of 
Christendom,  we  all  are  aware. 

Ab^lard,  on  the  other  hand,  had  set  forth  a  scheme  of 
thought  widely  different,  to  which  Bernard  could  not 
yield  the  assent  of  a  tolerating  silence ;  against  which  he 
wrote  with  vehement  energy;  from  his  words  against 
which  we  get  clearest  views  of  his  own  conception.  This 
brilliant  disputant,  whose  name  has  had  tragic  promi- 
nence in  history,  was  the  distinguished  champion  in  his 
time  of  the  ^^  moral  theory,"  so  called,  of  the  Atonement ; 
the  theory  that  the  basis  of  this  was  in  the  unspeakable 
love  of  God,  seeking  to  enkindle  in  man  new  love  toward 
Himself,  and  thus  to  remove  at  once  guilt  and  its  punish- 
ment, delivering  from  bondage,  and  opening  to  trans- 

^  Siqnidem  dubolo  nee  Dens  aliqaid  debebat,  nisi  poenam ;  nee  homo. 
niri  yJeem  at  ab  illo  yictus  iUum  reyincere  ;  aed  qaicquid  ab  iUo  exige* 
tMtu;  hoc  Deo  debebat»  non  diabolo.  —  C%Mr  Dtm^  Ub.  ii  cap.  19. 


816  BERNABO  OF  CLAmYAUZ  : 

gressors  the  liberty  of  God's  children.^  Bernard  recog- 
nized this  moral  effect  of  the  work  of  the  Lord  in  the 
heart  of  man,  and  speaks  always  most  tenderly  of  it. 
He  finds  the  reason  why  Redemption  was  effected  as 
it  was,  —  not  by  simple  Divine  authority  and  power,  as 
the  world  had  been  created,  but  through  humiliation, 
endurance,  and  the  agony  of  the  cross,  —  in  the  fact  that 
by  the  latter  a  greater  love  would  be  inspired  in  men, 
and  a  new  devotion.'  With  all  the  mystics  he  felt 
the  inspiring  touch  on  his  soul  of  ^^  the  blood  of  Jesus, 
full  of  love,  and  red  like  a  rose."  But  he  felt  that  some- 
thing beyond  this  was  accomplished  in  the  redeeming 
death  of  the  Lord ;  that  an  effect  was  produced  by  it 
elsewhere  than  in  man ;  that  it  became,  under  the  Divine 
administration,  in  an  objective,  forensic  sense,  the  suffi- 
cient condition  of  man's  forgiveness ;  and  of  this  effect 
the  ancient  account  appeared  to  him  the  best,  —  that 
man's  bondage  to  the  Prince  of  the  fallen  hierarchies, 
justly  recognized  by  God  on  account  of  man's  sin,  had 
been  broken  by  the  cross,  and  that  the  entire  Satanic 
claim  on  the  penitent  sinner  had  been  there  forever 
abolished;  so  that  whoever  afterward  believed  on  the 
Lord,  and  came  to  fellowship  with  Him,  entered  the  free- 
dom which  He  had  purchased. 

^  Nobis  autem  Tidetar  quod  in  hoc  jastificati  Bumus  in  sangoine 
Christi,  et  Beo  reconciliati,  quod  per  banc  singularem  gratiam  nobis 
ezhibitam,  quod  Filins  saos  nostraro  sasceperit  naturam,  et  in  ipso 
nos  tarn  verbo  quam  ezempio  institaendo  usque  ad  mortem  perstitit,  nos 
sibi  ampliua  per  amorem  astrinzit ;  ut  tanto  divine  gratisd  accensi  bene- 
ficio,  nU  jam  tolerare  propter  ipsuro  vera  reformidet  caritas.  .  .  .  Re- 
demptio  itaque  nostra  est  ilia  summa  in  nobis  per  passionem  Christi 
dilectio,  quae  nos  non  solnra  a  servitute  peccati  liberat,  sad  veram  nobis 
filiomm  Dei  libertatem  aoquirit ;  ut  amore  ejus  potins  quam  timore 
cuncta  impleamus,  qui  nobis  tantam  exhibuit  gratiam,  qua  migor  in- 
veniri,  ipso  attestante,  non  potest  —  Opera  Pet,  Abil,,  torn.  ii.  207; 
Comm.  in  Epist.  ad  Rom.  lib.  ii.     Paris  ed.,  1869, 

s  S«r.  in  Contica,  xi  7,  ool.  2719. 


AS  ▲  THG0L06IAN.  817 

The  faith  which  he  regarded  as  the  indispensable 
condition  of  this  was  not  a  formal  or  ritual  faith,  but 
personal,  affectionate,  spiritually  energetic.  The  distinc* 
tion  between  believing  about.Christ,  believing  His  words, 
believing  in  Him,  was  as  familiar  to  Bernard  as  it  was 
afterward  to  Peter  Lombard,  as  it  has  been  since  to 
any  preacher ;  ^  and  it  was  only  the  latter  believing,  in 
which  the  soul  appropriated  Christ  by  attaching  itself 
lovingly  to  Him,  which  was  recognized  by  him  as  the 
Divine  gift,  the  ^^  fides  formata,"  which  was  followed  by 
justification,  and  from  which  issued  the  effect  of  holi- 
ness. ^^  As  long  as  faith  lives  in  us,''  he  says,  ^^  Christ 
lives  in  us.  When  faith  dies,  there  is  as  it  were  a  dead 
Christ  in  the  soul.  As  we  discern  the  life  of  the  body 
by  its  movement,  so  the  life  of  faith  is  shown  by  good 
works.  As  the  soul  is  the  life  of  the  body,  so  love  is  the 
life  of  faith ;  and  as  the  body  dies  when  the  soul  leaves 
it,  so  faith  expires  when  love  grows  cold.'' '  It  is  by  the 
Divine  Spirit  that  this  faith  is  wrought  in  man.  ^^  Christ 
dies  for  us,"  he  says,  '^  and  deserves  to  be  loved ;  the 
Spirit  affects  us,  to  make  us  love  Him.  The  occasion  of 
love  is  afforded  by  the  one,  the  affection  itself  is  wrought 
by  the  other.  What  utter  confusion,  to  behold  the 
dying  Son  of  Ood  with  ungrateful  eyes !  which  yet  would 
easily  happen  to  us,  except  the  Spirit  were  present.  But 
now,  because  the  love  of  God  is  shed  abroad  in  our 
hearts  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  being  loved  we  love,  loving 
more  than  we  deserve  to  be  loved."  ^    Such  faith,  quick- 

1  Alind  est  enim  credere  in  Denm  [or  Ghristaml  alind  credere  Deo, 
aliud  credere  Denm.  .  .  .  Credere  in  Denm  est  credendo  amare,  credendo 
in  ewn  ire,  credendo  ei  adhsrere  et  ejus  membris  incorporari.  Per  banc 
fidem  jastificatnr  impua,  nt  deinde  ipsa  fides  incipiat  per  dilectionem 
opeiarL  —  Sent,,  lib.  iii.  dist.  28,  D. 

*  VoL  prim.,  Ser.  ii.  in  temp.  Res.,  col.  1964. 

*  Yol.  prim.,  epiat.  CTii. ;  coL  294. 


818  BEBNAJU)  OF  CLAmVAVX: 

ened  by  love,  and  6xpi*essed  in  holy  activities,  purifies 
the  heart,  and  prepares  it  for  the  vision  of  God.  Even 
the  hearing  of  the  word  may  be  said  to  lead  to  this 
vision  of  Ood,  because  faith  comes  by  that  hearing,  and 
by  faith  it  becomes  possible  that  we  shall  see  the 
Divine  One.* 

Justification  seems  to  have  been  clearly  distinguished 
by  him  from  the  subsequent  sanctification,  though  effects 
so  closely  associated  in  feeling  and  thought  may  not 
always  have  been  distributed  into  separate  conceptions. 
But  in  many  passages  he  seizes  the  distinction  which 
became  so  prominent  in  the  later  Reformation.  '^0 
lowest  and  highest  One ! "  he  says,  for  example,  in  one  of 
his  sermons  ;  ^'  O  humble,  yet  majestic  One !  0  shame  of 
men,  and  glory  of  the  angels !  No  one  more  exalted  than 
He ;  and  no  one  more  abased !  .  .  .  Scarcely  for  [pro]  a 
righteous  man  will  one  die ;  but  Thou  hast  suffered  for 
the  unjust,  who  hast  come  freely  to  justify  offenders,  to 
make  slaves  brethren,  captives  co-heirs,  exiles  kings ! "  ' 
So,  again :  ^  Truly  blessed  is  he  alone  to  whom  the  Lord 
doth  not  impute  sin !  For  who  has  not  sinned  ?  Not 
one.  All  have  sinned,  and  come  short  of  the  glory  of 
God.  But  who  shall  bring  any  accusation  against  God's 
chosen  ones  ?  It  suffices  to  me,  for  all  righteousness, 
to  have  Him  propitious  toward  me  against  whom  alone  I 
have  sinned.  All  which  He  has  determined  not  to  im- 
pute to  me  is  as  if  it  had  never  been.  Not  to  sin  is  God's 
righteousness;  the  merciful  remission  [indulgentia] 
of  God  is  the  righteousness  of  man.  .  .  .  The  heavenly 
birth  is  the  eternal  predestination,  by  which  God  loved 
His  chosen,  and  accepted  them  in  His  beloved  Son, 

^  AuditQs  dacit  ad  Tisum,  quia  fides  «z  audita,  qua  corda  mandantiu; 
ut  poasit  Tideri  Deiu.  —  Ser.  in  Ckintioa,  liiL  ;  col.  2984. 
*  Vol.  L  Ser.  in  Feria  iv.  8,  4,  oolL  1989-40. 


AS  A  THBOLOOIAN.  819 

before  the  foundation  of  the  world ;  so  that  they,  appear* 
ing  in  the  H0I7  One,  may  see  His  righteousness  and  His 
glory,  by  whom  they  become  partners  in  His  heirship, 
and  are  presented  as  conformed  to  His  image.  These 
are  treated  as  if  they  had  never  sinned ;  since  although 
they  are  seen  to  have  sinned  in  time,  their  offences  are 
not  recognized  in  Eternity,  because  the  love  of  the  Father 
covereth  the  multitude  of  them."  ^  ^^  What  more  ought 
He  to  have  done,  which  He  hath  not  done?  He  has 
enlightened  the  blind,  released  the  fettered,  has  led  back 
the  erring,  has  reconciled  the  accused.  .  .  .  Whoso- 
ever now,  in  penitence  for  sin,  hungers  and  thirsts  after 
righteousness,  let  him  believe  in  Thee  who  dost  justify 
the  ungodly,  and  being  justified  by  faith  alone  he  shall 
have  peace  before  God."  *  "  Thy  present  justification," 
he  says  elsewhere,  ^  is  both  the  revelation  of  the  Divine 
counsel,  and  a  certain  preparation  for  future  glory. 
Or,  if  predestination  is  rather  the  preparation  for  that, 
as  certainly  it  is,  justification  is  the  nearer  approach 
to  it."  • 

There  is  a  remarkable  passage  in  Anselm's  works,  in 
his  ^^  Admonition  to  the  Dying,"  in  which  he  says  to  him 
who  is  about  passing  away,  '^  Dost  thou  believe  that 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  died  for  thee?"  to  which  the 
response  is,'' I  do  believe."  '^Dost  thou  render  him 
thanks  ?  "  <'  I  do."  ^'  Believest  ihou  that  thou  canst  not 
be  saved  except  by  His  death  ? "  <<  I  do  so  believe." 
'^  Then  do  this  while  the  soul  tarries  in  thee :  put  thy 
whole  confidence  in  this  death  alone,  and  have  no  trust  in 
anything  else ;  commit  thyself  wholly  to  this  death,  cover 
thyself  altogether  with  it  alone,  enwrap  thyself  wholly 

YoL  i  Ser.  in  Cantica,  zziii.  16,  ooU.  2802-08. 

•  Ser.  in  Cantica,  zxu.  8,  ooL  2789. 

•  EpiBt  mL  7,  col.  298. 


820  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

in  it ;  and  if  Ood  Bhall  determine  to  judge  thee,  say  to 
Him :  ^  0  God !  I  interpose  the  death  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  between  me  and  Thy  judgment ;  in  no  other  way 
do  I  answer  Thee.'  If  He  shall  then  say,  '  I  judge  thee 
because  thou  art  a  sinner,'  answer,  ^0  Lord!  I  place 
the  death  of  Jesus  Christ  between  Thee  and  my  sins.'  If 
He  shall  say,  ^  Because  thou  hast  deserved  condemnation 
I  judge  thee/  reply :  '  0  God,  I  place  the  death  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  between  me  and  the  evils  which  I 
have  deserved ;  I  offer  His  merit  in  place  of  the  merits 
which  I  have  not.'"^  Berna-d  might  certainly  have 
adopted  for  his  own  these  woi  as  of  Anselm ;  and  the 
doctrine  of  acquittal  before  God,  through  the  sinner's 
faith  in  the  dying  Redeemer,  seems  in  them  as  plainly 
set  forth  as  in  any  words  of  Luther,  or  of  Paul.  The 
preliminary  office  of  justification,  to  which  sanctifica- 
tion  for  the  heavenly  felicity  is  the  subsequent  con- 
summation, appears  plainly  expressed.  The  one  is 
objective,  an  act  of  God  in  H  '.  jurisprudence ;  the  other 
is  subjective,  the  fruit  of  His  gracious  operation  in  the 
heart. 

Yet  it  is  always  to  be  observed  that  with  Bernard,  as 
with  all  the  mystics,  the  release  of  one  from  Divine  con- 
demnation was  inseparably  attended  in  thought  with 
the  infusion  of  grace ;  and  the  hidden  life  of  €k>d  in 
his  soul,  thus  inspired,  was  with  him  the  supreme  end  of 
aspiration  and  effort  It  was  not  on  any  forensic  act  of 
acquittal  that  his  thought  was  fixed,  or  on  any  claim  to 
freedom  from  punishment  so  acquired,  but  on  the  state 
of  inner  holiness  to  which  those  forgiven  of  God  should 
come,  when  their  faith,  working  by  love,  and  approving 
itself  in  holy  action,  should  have  brought  them  to 
intimate  fellowship  with  Him.     He  makes  a  sharp  and 

1  Open,  Admon.  Morienti^  p.  19i.    Paris  ed.»  1695. 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  821 

just  distinction  between  different  stages  of  Christian 
love.  It  is  what  he  regards  as  still  practically  a  fleshly 
love  (amorem  qaodam  mode  camalem)  when  the  heart 
is  merely  touched  by  what  Christ  did  or  suffered  in  the 
flesh ;  CTcn  though  one  be  moved  with  compunction  by 
discourse  upon  this,  hears  nothing  more  eagerly,  reads 
nothing  with  greater  desire,  recalls  nothing  more  fre- 
quently, meditates  upon  ^othing  with  greater  assiduity ; 
though  the  image  of  Christ,  at  His  birth,  in  His  infancy, 
when  teaching,  dying,  rising,  ascending,  stands  before 
one  in  his  prayer,  pressing;  him  to  the  love  of  virtue,  re- 
buking and  expelling  ^ti»  vices  of  the  flesh,  scattering 
darkness  from  the  mind,  quieting  the  excitements  of 
desire.  No  doubt  this  is  a  necessary  passage  toward  the 
higher  love.  o{  Christ  To  lead  men  to  it  appears  to 
Bernard  t9  hv^  been  probably  a  principal  reason  why 
the  invisible  God  was  willing  to  appear  in  the  flesh,  and 
to  hold  converse  with  men  as  Himself  a  man.  But 
Christ  Himself  points  his  ^^isciples  to  a  higher  level  of 
love  when  He  says,  ^*  It  Ui  the  Spirit  that  quickeneth ; 
the  flesh  profiteth  nothing."  Paul,  he  thinks,  had 
ascended  to  this,  when  he  no  longer  knew  Christ  after 
the  flesh.  Others  may  attain  it,  loving  the  Lord  for 
Himself  in  His  Divine  beauty,  with  all  the  heart ;  and 
00  they  shall  be  always  inflamed  with  zeal  for  righteous- 
ness and  truth,  shall  glow  with  delight  in  the  study 
of  the  Divine  wisdom,  shall  find  holiness  of  spirit  and 
purity  of  manners  lovely  to  them,  shall  abhor  detraction, 
know  nothing  of  envy,  detest  pride,  not  only  fly  from  but 
despise  human  glory,  shall  vehemently  hate  and  destroy 
all  defilement  of  the  heart,  and  shall,  as  it  were  naturally, 
instinctively,  reject  all  evil,  and  cleave  affectionately  to 
all  that  is  good.  This  is  the  spiritual  mind,  which  no 
labor  nor  torture  can  overcomei  which  has  no  fear  of 

21 


822  BERNARD  OF  CLAXBYAUZ  : 

death,  and  to  which  shall   be   opened  the  immortal 
treaaores  of  the  Divine  love.^ 

To  this  highest  state  of  inward  experience  Bernard 
would  strive  to  ascend  himself,  and  to  this  he  would  lift 
his  eager  disciples.  He  was  called  by  his  contemporaries 
^^  the  man  of  Love/'  because  he  so  conspicuously  sought 
it  in  himself,  insisted  on  it  in  others ;  and,  as  I  have  said 
in  a  previous  lecture,  he  thought  no  love  of  God  perfect 
until  one  had  come  to  love  himself  only  on  account  of 
the  Divine  One  by  whom  he  had  been  created,  and  by 
whom  redeemed.  He  alone  truly  loves  Ood,  his  thought 
is,  who  loves  Him  because  He  is  good  in  Himself,  not 
because  he  has  done  good  to  the  one  loving ;  the  soul 
then  pours  itself  forth  upon  God,  thinking  only  of  Him, 
and  cleaving  to  Him  in  the  perfected  unity  of  the  Spirit 
'^  Blessed  and  holy  would  I  call  him,''  he  says,  ^^  to  whom 
it  is  granted  to  experience  something  like  this  in  this 
mortal  life,  though  it  be  but  once,  or  only  occasionaUy, 
and  for  hardly  more  than  a  moment  To  lose  thyself 
utterly,  as  if  thou  wert  not,  not  to  think  of  thyself,  to 
empty  thee  of  thy  self,  and  almost  annihilate  it,  this  is  the 
part  of  heavenly  converse,  not  of  mere  human  affection. 
...  It  is  fit  that  we  neither  wish  to  have  been  any* 
thing,  nor  to  be  anything,  except  on  His  account; 
because  it  is  His  will,  not  because  it  is  for  our  pleasure. 
.  .  .  Even  as  the  atmosphere,  when  flooded  by  the 
light  of  the  sun,  is  transfigured  into  such  clearness  of 
light  that  it  does  not  so  much  seem  to  us  illuminated 
as  to  have  itself  become  elemental  light,  so  it  is  needful 
that  in  the  holy  every  human  affection  should  in 
some  ineffable  way  clear  itself  from  itself,  and  become 
inwardly  transformed  into  the  will  of  God  ...  In  the 
spiritual  immortal  body  the  soul  may  hope  to  attain  this 

^  Open»  ToL  prun.,  Ser.  xx.  in  Cantica,  oolL  2774-2777. 


▲S  A  THB0L06IAN.  828 

foorih  state  of  the  fulness  of  love,  or  rather  to  be  lifted 
into  it,  since  it  will  not  so  much  follow  on  human  en* 
deavor  as  be  given  by  the  power  of  God  to  whomsoever 
He  will."  1 

It  was  for  this  supremest  experience  that  Bernard 
labored  and  prayed;  that  he  might  know,  in  some 
measure,  while  on  the  earth,  the  holy  joy  of  saints  in 
light  When  such  a  final  transfiguring  love  should  be 
vitally  present  Ood  would  be  revealed  not  to  the  soul 
only,  but  within  it.  It  would  have  the  immediate  intui- 
tion of  Him,  as  declared  in  its  ecstatic  consciousness ; 
and  in  that  would  be  perfect  felicity.  When  the  mind 
has  once  learned  of  the  Lord,  he  says,  to  retire  into  this 
interior  quiet  from  the  confused  noises  of  the  world,  and 
from  all  the  pressure  of  outward  cares,  ^^  when  the  soul 
has  been  taught  of  God  to  enter  into  itself,  and  in  its 
intimate  consciousness  to  sigh  for  His  presence  and 
always  thus  to  seek  His  face, — this  is  the  work  of  His 
Spirit,  and  to  go  back  from  this  to  the  allurements  of 
the  world  would  be  like  plunging  out  of  Paradise,  and 
being  debarred  from  entrance  upon  glory.  I  know 
not  whether  such  a  soul  would  account  the  punishment 
of  hell,  endured  for  a  season,  more  horrible  or  more  penal 
than  to  go  back  from  the  sweetness  of  this  spiritual 
aspiration  to  the  shades  and  sorrows  of  the  flesh." ' 

It  is  very  plain,  therefore,  that  the  purpose  of  Christi- 
anity was  not  satisfied  in  his  view  by  any  dexterity  in 
ritual  practice,  by  any  philosophical  apprehension  of 
truth,  by  any  careful  adjustment  of  the  conduct  to  eth- 

1  opera,  voL  prim.,  Tract,  de  dilig.  Deo,  cap.  10,  colL  1351-52. 

s  Talis,  inqnaxn,  anima  nescio  an  vel  ipsam  gehenoam  ad  tempua  ex- 
periri  honibilius  poBnaliuave  ducat,  quam  peat  spiritualis  stadii  higua 
guatatam  semel  snavitatem  ezire  denuo  ad  illecebras,  vel  potins  ad  moleAtiafl 
camia.  —  Opera,  toL  prim,,  Ser.  xzxt.  in  Cantica,  colL2890,  2891. 


824  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

ical  precepts,  by  any  occasional  gladness  of  hope,  or 
transient  experience  of  penitence  or  of  praise.  It  was 
not  satisfied,  indeed,  by  a  free  development  of  those 
noble  and  beautiful  elements  of  character  which  con- 
stitute for  us  Christian  manhood.  He  looked  beyond 
these.  He  desired  and  sought  a  superhuman  exalta- 
tion of  the  soul,  above  sense  and  flesh,  above  logical 
thought  or  ardent  sentiment,  toward  or  into  the  vision 
angelic.  The  subjugation  of  the  body,  almost  to  the 
point  of  its  nullification,  was  in  his  view  intimately  con* 
nected  with  this.  The  absorption  of  the  mind  on  spirit- 
ual themes  was  essentially  involved  in  it.  With  him, 
as  with  others  sympathetic  with  his  temper,  the  only 
perfect  attainment  of  the  soul  was  in  its  union  with  the 
Divine,  while  personal  consciousness  was  to  be  main- 
tained even  in  that  ecstatic  tranquility.  For  this  he 
prayed ;  toward  this  he  aspired  and  incessantly  labored ; 
not  waiting,  as  some  one  has  scornfully  said,  ^^to  swoon 
into  Divine  repose,"'  but  seeking  to  arise,  by  contem- 
plation, prayer,  assiduous  self-discipline,  noble  service, 
to  a  point  where,  by  God's  grace,  through  the  indwell* 
ing  of  His  Spirit,  he  might  discern  Him  in  the  soul, 
become  a  partaker  of  the  Divine  nature,  be  changed  into 
His  image  from  glory  to  glory,  be  filled  even  unto  His 
fulness.  Up  from  the  dark  and  turbulent  Europe,  in 
which  for  the  time  he  had  to  tarry,  he  would  rise  as 
on  wings  to  the  heavenly  courts.  Of  jasper  walls  and 
crystal  pavements  he  seems  hardly  to  have  thou^t. 
But  in  the  solitude  of  his  cell,  or  from  under  the  um- 
brage of  abbey  forests,  he  would  rise  to  partake  with  an- 
gelic companies  in  the  transfiguring  Vision  of  (}od.  It 
waa  the  radiance  of  this  immense  aspiration  which  glori- 
fied his  life ;  which  shed  at  the  time,  and  has  shed  ever 
since,  its  heavenly  lustre  upon  his  career. 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  825 

If  now  we  look  from  this  point  of  view  upon  his  gov- 
erning conception  of  the  Church,  we  shall  see  how 
largely  that  partook  of  the  mystical,  spiritual,  supernat- 
tural  character  which  he  assigned  to  Christianity  and  its 
aims.  The  Church  was  beneficent  and  glorious  to  him 
because  of  its  unique  and  superlative  purpose, — to  secure 
to  men  these  blessings,  spiritual  in  nature,  unmeasured 
and  immortal.  He  loved  it  as  his  mother  had  loved  it. 
It  was  to  him  the  one  Divine  institution  on  earth ;  in 
comparison  with  which  all  other  institutions,  feudal, 
royal,  imperial  or  whatever,  were  common  and  secular, 
bom  of  man's  ambition  or  pride,  and  existing  only  for 
secular  ends.  This  alone  took  cognizance  of  the  soul 
with  its  vast  possibilities,  imparted  to  it  the  grace  of  the 
Host  High,  and  fitted  it  for  transcendent  welfares.  His 
devotion  to  the  Church  was  therefore  not  political,  diplo- 
matic. No  temporal  ambitions  mingled  with  it,  as  possi- 
bly sometimes  in  the  spirit  of  Hildebrand.  It  was  a 
passionate  devotion  of  the  heart,  bom,  as  Bemard  felt, 
of  his  deepest  experience,  surcharged  with  force  by  his 
noblest  aspirations,  to  which  every  intensest  desire  for 
the  welfare  of  the  world  gave  impulse  and  energy.  The 
^multitude  fidelium,"  the  goodly  and  vast  fellowship 
of  Ood's  children,  —  it  was  not  to  him  what  the  camp, 
the  court,  the  forum  or  the  school,  might  be  to  others. 
It  was  not  to  him  what  it  was  to  others  who  sought  of- 
fice in  it,  emolument,  power.  Organized,  as  for  ages  it 
bad  been,  with  priests,  bishops,  archbishops,  the  pontiff, 
and  with  Christ  Himself  its  invisible  Head,  it  was  to 
Bemard  His  mystical  body  on  earth, — an  organism  per- 
vaded and  vitalized  by  His  spirit,  whose  teachings  artic- 
ulated supernal  truth  inaccessible  to  mere  reason ;  whose 
ministries  offered  spiritual  life  to  every  receptive  and 
contrite  heart ;  which  was  by  its  nature  universal;  whose 


826  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBVAUX: 

power  must  always  widen  in  the  world,  to  illuminate  and 
renew  this ;  whose  very  outward  form,  of  offices  and  rit> 
ual,  prefigured  from  afar  the  heavenly  hierarchies. 
Nothing  was  too  great  to  be  done  for  this  Church ;  noth- 
ing too  rare,  costly,  or  difficult  to  be  made  man's  rever- 
ent tribute  to  it.  The  fellowship  of  the  life  Divine, 
communicated  through  it,  simply  obliterated  human 
distinctions.  It  put  craftsman  and  baron,  serf  and 
sovereign,  upon  the  same  footing,  before  the  cross,  be- 
fore the  Throne*  It  knit  together,  in  his  view,  in  vital 
bonds,  all  spiritual  believers,  however  divided  in  time  or 
by  space,  so  that  each  might  joyfully  say,  as  the  Mdre 
Ang^lique  said  afterward  at  Port  Royal,  ^^  All  saints  are 
of  my  order,  and  I  am  of  the  order  of  all  saints."  Other 
institutions  passed  away,  only  this  was  abiding ;  others 
were  mutable,  this  unchangeable,  divinely  complete,  not 
subject  to  attacks  of  human  caprice ;  and  while  the  planet 
itself  should  continue,  this  must  remain,  representing  tiie 
personal  Lord  on  the  earth,  and  preparing  men,  in  increas- 
ing  multitudes,  to  attain  the  vision  of  Him  on  high. 

We  may  feel  that  this  conception  of  the  Church  was 
largely  ideal ;  almost  as  unlike  what  existed  at  the  time, 
or  what  has  since  existed,  in  the  Roman  Catholic  world, 
as  would  be  a  fanciful  picture  of  the  moon  which  should 
portray  it  as  a  smooth  sphere,  glowing  with  inherent 
light  But  we  must  at  least  have  the  fairness  to  observe 
that  it  was  not  a  mere  prismatic  halo  of  poetic  miscon- 
ception which  to  Bernard  invested  the  Church.  It  was 
not  any  pomp  of  vestments,  or  stateliness  of  buildings, 
or  splendor  of  equipment,  which  attracted  his  heart  to 
it ;  least  of  all  was  it  any  opulence  of  possessions,  or  any 
prerogative  in  secular  affairs,  fie  loved  it  for  its 
assumed  relation  to  spiritual  ends.  Because  he  felt  it 
Divinely  constituted,  to  confer  upon  men  inestimable  and 


▲8  A  THEOLOGIAN.  827 

immortal  blessingB,  it  stood  before  him  among  the  battle- 
scarred  institutes  of  the  earth  with  the  light  of  the  celes- 
tial morning  forever  npon  it,  fair  as  the  moon,  clear 
as  the  sun,  and  terrible  to  iniquity  as  an  army  with 
banners.  He  did  not  wish,  he  was  utterly  unwilling,  to 
be  one  of  its  crowned  and  decorated  princes.  To  be 
an  humble  servant  in  it,  to  Him  who  had  ordained  it 
in  heaven,  and  had  established  its  foundations  at  Beth* 
lehem  and  on  Calvary,  was  the  supreme  ambition  of  his 
heart. 

But  for  this  very  reason,  because  his  conception  of  the 
Church  was  so  majestic,  he  was  all  the  more  strict  in  his 
requirements  of  its  officers,  and  all  the  more  deeply 
offended  and  pained  by  whatever,  either  in  it  or  in  them, 
failed  to  accord  with  the  Christian  rule.  It  is  abundantly 
evident  that  he  held  no  doctrine  of  papal  infallibility 
which  could  blind  him  to  what  was  wrong  in  pontifi- 
cal decisions,  or  could  limit  in  the  least  the  freedom 
and  sharpness  of  his  rebuke  toward  pontiffs  who  had 
erred.  I  have  quoted  already,  in  a  previous  lecture, 
some  words  of  his  to  Innocent  Second,  written  with  the 
frankest  severity,  and  which  stung  the  more  because  of 
their  truth.  There  were  other  sentences  in  the  same  letter 
which  it  could  hardly  have  been  agreeable  for  the  Pontiff 
to  read :  ^^  No  doubt  God  is  angry  with  schismatics, 
but  He  is  by  no  means  well-disposed  toward  Catholics. 
•  .  .  When  such  men  as  these  bishops  [whom  he  has  just 
described  as  practically  tyrants]  are  defended,  sustained, 
honored,  caressed,  multitudes  are  amazed  and  scandal- 
ized, who  most  certainly  know  things  to  be  presented  in 
the  manners  and  the  life  of  these  men  which  should  be, 
I  will  not  say  in  bishops,  but  in  any  secular  persons 
whatever,  thoroughly  condemned  and  execrated  ;  things 
which  it  would  shame  me  to  write,  and  not  be  decent  for 


828  BBBNABD  OF  GLAmYAUZ  : 

jou  to  hear.  Be  it  bo,  that  they  cannot  be  deposed 
while  no  one  offers  special  charges  against  them;  yet 
ought  they  whom  general  fame  so  accuses  to  have 
properly  youchsafed  to  them  the  special  familiarity  of 
the  Apostolic  See,  or  to  be  exalted  to  higher  honor  t ''  ^ 

So  he  had  written  before  this  to  Honorius  Second, 
when  he  had  himself  been  abbot  at  Clairvaux  hardly  yet 
a  dozen  years :  ^^  It  is  certainly  a  great  necessity  which 
draws  us  out  of  our  cloisters  before  the  public;  but 
we  speak  what  we  haye  seen.  We  see  sad  things,  and 
sad  things  we  speak ;  the  Honor  of  the  Church  is  not  a 
little  wounded  in  this  time  of  Honorius.  Just  of  late  a 
temper  of  humility  in  the  king,  or  rather  the  firmness  of 
the  bishops  against  him,  was  beginning  to  bend  his 
angry  temper,  when  lo !  the  highest  authority,  from  the 
Supreme  Pontiff,  comes  intervening ;  and  alas !  it  casts 
down  the  firmness,  and  reinstates  the  pride !  We  know 
of  course  that  it  has  been  by  some  stealthy  lie  that  you 
have  been  led  to  command  the  suspension  of  this  just 
and  needful  Interdict.  But  what  we  marvel  at  is  on 
what  reasonable  ground  the  case  has  been  judged  in  this 
one-sided  fashion,  and  adjudged  against  the  absent"' 
The  verbal  play  on  the  name  ^^  Honorius "  can  hardly 
here  have  been  accidental ;  and  it  shows  how  far  Ber- 
nard was,  even  then,  from  fear  of  dignities.  It  is  not 
merely  an  acute  touch  of  his  sharp  pen.  There  is  in  it 
almost  a  suggestion  of  personal  scorn. 

In  like  manner  he  wrote  years  afterwards  to  Eugenius 
Third,  in  terms  which  the  reformers  of  centuries  later 
might  simply  have  copied:  ^^I  utter  the  crying  com- 
plaint of  the  churches,  that  they  are  maimed,  or 


>  Opera,  toL  prim.,  eput  dzzTiii.,  col.  899. 
*  Epist  zlvi,  coL  191.     Honorsm  Ecclaiig,  Honorii  temporo  lum 
Buninie  ImmiL 


AS  A  THBOLOOIAN.  829 

membered.  There  are  none,  or  very  few  of  them,  which 
do  not  mourn  for  such  injury,  or  do  not  fear  it  Do 
you  ask  what  injury?  Abbots  are  withdrawn  from 
bishops,  bishops  from  archbishops,  archbishops  from 
primates.  By  so  doing  you  prove  that  you  ha?e  a 
plenitude  of  power,  but  peradventure  not  so  much  of 
justice.  You  do  this  because  you  are  able  to  do  it ;  but 
whether  you  ought  to  do  it  is  another  question.  A 
spiritually  minded  man,  who  judges  everything  with 
discrimination,  that  he  himself  may  be  judged  of  no  one, 
applies  to  his  work  a  certain  threefold  consideration ; 
first,  is  it  lawful  ?  then,  is  it  fit  and  appropriate  7  finally, 
is  it  expedient  ?  But  why  is  it  not  indecent  for  you  to 
put  your  will  in  place  of  law ;  and  because  there  is  no 
tribunal  before  which  you  can  be  cited,  to  exercise  your 
power,  and  be  careless  of  reason  ?  Art  thou,  tiien, 
greater  than  thy  Master,  who  said,  ^  I  came  not  to  do 
mine  own  will '  ?  What  can  be  so  brutal  as  to  act,  not 
on  behalf  of  reason,  but  of  lust  ?  to  be  moved,  not  by 
judgment,  but  by  appetite  ?  What  so  unworthy  of  thee 
as,  while  holding  everything,  not  to  be  content  with  the 
whole,  unless  also  some  small  particulars,  minute 
portions  of  the  universal  dominion  committed  to  thee, 
as  if  they  were  not  already  thine,  thou  shalt  busy  thyself 
in  I  know  not  what  ways  to  make  thine  own  ?  Con- 
cerning which  I  wish  to  remind  thee  of  the  parable  of 
Nathan,  about  the  man  who  had  many  flocks,  but  who 
coveted  the  one  lamb  of  tiie  poor  man.  The  act,  or 
really  the  crime,  of  King  Ahab  may  also  come  before 
ihee,  who  held  the  supremacy  over  all  things,  but  who 
longed  for  the  one  vineyard.  God  keep  thee  from  hear- 
ing what  he  heard,  ^Thou  hast  killed,  and  hast  taken 
possession.'"^    He  says  to  the  Pope,  frankly,  that  he 

>  Qptn,  voL  prim.,  Tnct  de  Oonaid.,  lib.  iii  cap.  4^  obO.  104M0. 


880  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBVAUZ: 

fears  no  poiBon  for  him,  and  no  sword,  more  than  he 
fears  the  lust  of  domination ;  ^  that  he  does  not  spare 
him,  in  order  that  God  may  spare  him ;  that  Peter,  whose 
representative  he  is,  never  knew  anything  of  being  carried 
in  a  procession,  on  a  white  horse,  adorned  with  gems, 
silks,  gold,  surrounded  by  soldiers  and  shouting  atten- 
dants ;  that  in  such  things  he  shows  himself  the  successor 
of  Constantine,  not  of  Peter ;  that  his  one  proper  business 
is  to  do  the  work  of  an  evangelist,  and  fulfil  the  office 
of  a  pastor.'  He  writes,  in  other  words,  to  Eugenius 
the  Pontiff  precisely  as  he  would  have  written  or  spoken 
if  the  Pope  had  been  still  a  private  monk,  under  his 
supervision;  and  the  thought  of  any  infallible  wisdom 
belonging  to  him  because  he  was  pope  seems  as  distant 
from  the  mind  of  Bernard  as  the  thought  that  con- 
secration to  the  new  office  had  made  him  an  angel. 

Of  the  official  counsellors  of  the  Pontiff  he  wrote  in 
terms  of  still  sharper  severity.  His  words  are  as  if  traced, 
not  with  a  stylus,  but  with  the  point  of  a  blade.  ^^  Before 
all  things,"  he  says,  ^^  they  are  shrewd  to  do  evil,  but 
know  not  how  to  do  good.  They  are  hateful  alike  to 
earth  and  heaven,  on  either  of  which  they  lay  their 
hands ;  impious  toward  God,  rashly  bold  in  respect  to 
holy  things,  factious  toward  each  other,  envious  toward 
their  neighbors,  inhuman  toward  strangers ;  whom  no- 
body loves,  as  they  love  nobody ;  and  who  are  compelled 
to  fear  all,  since  they  desire  to  be  feared  by  all.  They 
cannot  bear  to  be  subordinate,  do  not  know  how  to  rule ; 
are  faithless  to  their  superiors,  insupportable  to  those 
beneath  them.  They  are  immodest  in  seeking  favors, 
shameless  in  refusing  them.  They  are  importunate  to 
receive,  restless  till  they  do  receive,  ungrateful  when 

^  Opera,  YoL  prim.,  Tract,  de  Gonsid.,  lib.  iii.  capi  4,  ooL  1040. 
•  lUd.,  lib.  iy.,  CAp.  8,  coL  1060. 


▲8  ▲  THEOLOGIAN.  S81 

thej  have  received.  They  have  taught  their  tongues 
to  speak  great  things,  while  they  do  extremely  little. 
They  are  the  largest  promisers,  and  the  smallest  per* 
formers;  the  smoothest  flatterers,  and  the  most  biting 
detractors;  the  most  unmixed  dissemblers,  the  most 
malignant  traitors. "  ^  He  prefaces  this  tremendous  de- 
scription by  saying,  *  Try  now  if  I  do  not  know  some- 
thing of  the  manners  of  these  folks ; '  of  whom  he  has 
just  before  said  that  they  do  all  the  papal  business,  and 
that  few  look  to  see  what  they  will  say,  but  all  look  at 
the  gifts  in  their  hands.  Certainly  severer  words  could 
hardly  have  been  uttered  by  Luther  himself,  when  he  re- 
turned from  that  visit  to  Rome  from  which  he  went  back 
to  shake  the  world.^ 

His  whole  conception  of  the  character  and  work  of  a 
true  bishop  is  set  forth  by  him  in  a  treatise  devoted  to 
the  purpose,  and  addressed  to  the  Archbishop  of  Sens. 
In  this  he  describes  the  responsibilities  of  the  office; 
the  true  honor  to  be  derived  from  virtue  and  zeal,  not 
from  position ;  the  ornaments  of  purity,  charity,  humility, 

1  Tract  de  OooBid.,  lib.  !▼.,  cap.  2,  colL  1058-69. 

*  HIb  description  of  one  of  the  papal  legates  exceeds  what  historians 
have  said  of  the  Borgias.    One  may  better  transcribe  it  than  translate :  — 

Pertransiit  legatus  Tester  de  gente  in  gentem,  et  de  regno  ad  popnlum 
altemnit  foeda  et  horrenda  vestigia  apad  nos  nbiqne  relinquens.  A  radios 
Alpiom  et  regno  Teutonicorura,  per  omnes  pene  Eoclesias  Francifls,  et  cir- 
cnmqoaqae  oircumiens  nsque  Botbomagam,  Tir  apostolicus  repleTlt,  non 
Eyangelio,  sed  sacrilegio.    Turpia  fertor  ubiqae  commisisse  ;  spolia  eccle-  y 

fliamm  asportasse ;  formosalos  pneros  in  ecclesiasticis  honoribus,  nbi  potait» 
pvomoyisse;  nbi  non  potnit,  Tolnisse.  Haiti  se  redemerunt,  ne  veniret  ad 
eoe ;  ad  qnos  perrenire  non  potnit,  ezegit  et  eztorsit  per  nnntioe.  SiBcn- 
lans,  religiosi,  omnea  nude  loqnnntur  de  eo;  panperes,  et  monachi,  et 
cUrid  conqnemntnr  de  eo.  Homines  qnoqne  sn«  professionis,  ipsi  sant 
qui  magis  ezhorrent  et  famam  ejus,  et  Titam.  Hoc  testimoninm  habet 
et  ab  his  qni  intas»  et  ab  his  qni  foris  sunt.  .  .  .  Legite  literas  has 
domino  meo.  Ipse  yiderit,  qnid  de  tali  homine  faciendnm  sit;  9ffi 
UbaraTi  animam  meam.  —  Qpero,  vol.  prim.,  epist  cczc,  ooL  670> 


882  BERNARD  OF  CLAmVAUX  : 

which  belong  to  it,  the  latter  being  specially  necessary  to 
prelates ;  the  glory  wliich  pertains  to  a  good  conscience, 
maintained  without  fear,  in  the  sight  of  Him  who  is 
Judge  of  all;  and  he  sharply  rebukes  the  ambition  of 
ecclesiastics,  with  their  readiness  to  seek  or  to  confer 
many  benefices,  even  when  their  youth  should  keep  them 
under  the  ferule  of  the  tutor  rather  than  see  them  trans- 
ferred to  the  leadership  of  presbyteries.^  It  is  perfectly 
evident  that  he  saw,  as  clearly  as  any  one,  the  evils  in 
the  Church,  the  shames  which  they  brought,  the  perils 
which  they  involved ;  and  that  nothing  could  have  held 
his  allegiance  to  it,  as  it  then  existed,  except  his  spiritual 
and  mystical  conception  of  what  it  was  in  ideal  plan  and 
purpose, — the  Bride  of  Christ,  the  Divine  instrument  for 
lifting  the  world  into  wisdom,  holiness,  the  vision  and 
rapture  of  the  heavenly  life.  In  spite  of  all  the  craft  and 
avarice,  the  ambition  and  hypocrisy,  the  coarse,  brutal, 
or  malign  passions,  which  he  saw  in  men  eminent  in  the 
Church,  he  held  to  this  conception  of  it,  and  wrought  for 
it  with  a  zeal  which  has  made  his  name  eminent  in  its 
annals,  and  to  which  we,  however  widely  differing  from 
him,  may  pay  our  tribute  of  admiration. 

His  conception  of  the  sacraments  moved  on  a  line  with 
this  conception  of  the  Church,  and  partook  of  the  same 
ideal  dignity.  The  ancient  description  of  a  sacrament, 
as  ^^  sacr»  rei  signum,''  still  lived  in  the  Church,  though 
the  notion  of  a  renovating  power  intimately  and  in- 
separably associated  with  the  sign  was  rapidly  gaining 
ground.  Bernard  defines  a  sacrament  as  a  sacred  sign, 
or  a  holy  thing  with  a  secret  significance.  To  take  an 
example  from  things  familiar,  he  says,  a  ring  may  be 
given  for  itself  alone,  and  as  signifying  nothing  beyond 
the  gift ;  or  it  may  be  given  as  the  sign  of  investiture  with 

1  Opoi%  ToL  prim.,  ooll.  1101-1180. 


A8  ▲  THBOLOQUM.  888 

an  inheritanee,  like  the  staff  which  an  abbot  receives, 
or  the  staff  and  ring  given  to  a  bishop,  as  they  enter  on 
the  offices  of  which  these  are  symbols.  So  baptism 
signifies  the  remission  of  sins,  of  which  the  Gk>spel 
gives  the  promise;  while  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's 
Sopper  signifies  the  Divine  grace  by  which  we  are  enabled 
to  overcome  dispositions  to  sin ;  and  what  he  regarded  as 
the  sacrament  of  feet-washing  represents  a  cleansing 
from  those  daily  offences  which  seem  inevitable  for  those 
who  walk  in  the  dust  of  the  world.^  He  agrees  with  Am- 
brose and  Augustine  that  faith  is  sufficient  before  God, 
without  baptism,  if  for  any  reason  that  be  unattainable ; 
and  he  sustains  this  position  by  citing  the  example  of 
the  penitent  robber,  unbaptized,  but  who  was  to  be 
presently  with  the  Lord  in  Paradise.'  The  eucharist 
he  saw  to  be  richly  freighted  with  spiritual  meaning  and 
holy  influence  for  those  who  in  the  longing  of  their 
hearts  were  prepared  to  receive  it ;  but  the  surrender  of 
the  soul  to  Christ,  in  self-renunciation  and  spiritual  f el- 
lowship,  he  clearly  held  essential  to  its  efficacy. 

1  fikenmentain  dieitar  aacram  signnm,  sive  aacrnm  seeretam.  .  .  .  Ut 
enim  de  nsoAlibiu  smnftmiis  ezftmplam,  dator  umulns  abiolate  propter  an- 
nnlmii,  0t  nulla  eat  aigniflcatio ;  dator  ad  mTestiendnm  de  hmeditato  aliqua, 
6t  aignmn  est,  ita  ut  jam  dicere  poesit  qui  acdpit,  Annulus  non  valet  quid- 
qnam,  aed  haieditas  est  qnam  qoerebam.  .  •  .  Qam  est  ei^  gratia,  ande 
per  Baptismam  inTestimar  t  Utiqae  paigatio  delictorum. .  .  .  Confidite, 
quia  et  in  hoe  gratia  sabrenit,  ot  at  secnri  sitis,  sacramentam  Dominici 
Corporis  et  Saogoinis  pratioai  unTestitaram  habetis.  Dao  enim  illud  sacra- 
msntiim  opeimtar  in  nobis :  nt  videlicet  et  sensnm  minoat  in  minimis,  et  in 
gmvioribospeoeatistollatomninooonsensam.  .  .  .  Nam  at  de  remissione 
qnotldlanoram  minima  dabitemas,  habemos  ejos  sacramentam,  pedum  ab* 
Intionem.  .  .  .  Lotas  enim  est,  qni  gravia  peccata  non  habet,  eigas  caput, 
id  est  intentio,  et  manns,  id  est  operatio  et  conversatio,  munda  est ;  sed 
pedes,  qui  sunt  anims  afTectiones,  dnm  in  hoc  pnlvere  gradimur,  ez  toto 
ronndi  esse  non  possunt  —  Opera^  voL  prim.,  Ser.  in  Gcsna  Dom.,  oolL 

1948-60. 

•  Tract  de  Baptismo,  cap.  ii.  0-8,  coU.  1410-18. 


884  BERNAfiD  OP  CLAIBVAUZ: 

The  deBign  of  the  sacraments  was  recognized  by  the 
orthodox  Mystics  as  corresponding  to  the  religious  needs 
of  man's  soul ;  their  thought  was  that  spiritually,  not 
corporeally,  the  Lord  is  receiyed  in  the  eucharist ;  and 
that  only  he  who  partakes  of  the  wafer  with  responsive 
faith  and  love  in  his  heart  has  the  essence  of  the  sacra- 
ment.  While  Bernard  certainly  recognized  a  real  presence 
of  Christ  in  the  consecrated  host,  a  gracious  and  glorify- 
ing revelation  of  Him,  it  was  simply  in  harmony  with 
his  whole  trend  of  thought  that  he  should  regard  this  as 
only  discernible  by  the  devout,  and  as  the  means  of  a 
higher  spiritual  life  to  their  elect  souls.  Tt  was  not  a 
presence  to  be  bruised  by  the  teeth,  or  to  operate  any 
magical  transformation,  but  a  presence  to  be  appre- 
hended by  the  heart,^  and  to  cherish  the  grace  which 
was  already  in  that.  One  can  hardly  conceive  of  any 
questions  more  utterly  remote  from  his  whole  sphere  of 
thought  about  the  sacrament  of  the  Supper  than  the 
questions  which  engaged  and  perplexed  many  minds 
after  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  had  been  formu- 
lated, as  to  what  becomes  of  the  body  of  Christ  when  the 
consecrat-ed  host  has  been  nibbled  by  mice,  eaten  by  dogs, 
or  consumed  in  the  fire.  The  eucharist  to  Bernard 
was  a  mystical,  supernal,  Divine  instrument,  for  manifest- 

^  CommeDting  on  John  vL  58,  «  Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the  son  of 
man,  and  drink  hU  blood/'  Rabanus  Mannis  had  said :  "  Facinns  ^el  flagi- 
tinm  videtnr  jubere.  Figorata  ergo  est,  pnecipiens  {masioni  Domixd  esse 
commanicandnm,  et  snayiter  atqne  ntiliter  recolendum  in  memoria,  quod 
pro  nobis  caro  ejns  crncifixa  et  vnlnerata  sit."  (De  Cleric.  Instit,  lib. 
iii.  c.  13.)  So  again:  "Tunc  enim  vere  et  salnbriter  corpus  et  san- 
guinem  Chrtsti  percipimus,  si  non  tantum  volnmns,  nt  in  sacnunento 
camem  et  sangninem  Christi  edarons,  sed  nsqne  ad  Spiritos  partidpa- 
tionera  mandncemns  et  bibamns,  ut  in  Domini  corpore  tanqoam  membra 
maneamns,  nt  ejns  Spiritn  yegetemnr."  (Lib.  i.  e.  81.)  Undonbtedljr 
this  was  the  prevalent  thought  in  devout  and  discerning  minds  in  Bernard's 
tiae^  three  hundred  years  after. 


AS  ▲  THBOLOGIAN.  885 

ing  Christ  to  those  who  longed  for  Him,  but  who  could 
not  bear  the  vision  of  Him  except  aa  presented  through 
the  yeiling  yet  lucent  cloud  of  the  symbol.^  As  the 
spittle  and  the  dust  had  been  made  effective  by  the 
power  of  the  Lord  to  open  blind  eyes,  so  the  common 
materials  employed  in  the  Supper  were  in  like  manner 
transfigured  by  Him,  to  become  the  means  of  illuminating 
and  purifying  receptive  souls.  The  gates  of  heaven  ap- 
peared to  Bernard  silently  to  open  when,  through  the 
sacrament,  as  worthily  administered  and  worthily  re- 
ceived, the  Heavenly  Lord  approached  His  beloved. 

This  spiritual  conception  of  the  Church,  with  its  teach- 
ings and  sacraments,  as  offering  Divine  preparations  on 
earth  for  celestial  experiences,  naturally  led  Bernard  to 
associate  very  closely  the  life  to  come  with  that  here 
passing,  to  feel  himself  intimately  allied  with  the  Church 
Invisible,  and  to  hold  almost  as  clearly  before  his  view 
the  saints  ascended  as  he  did  the  present  disciples  whom 
he  instructed  and  quickened  at  Clairvaux.  For  those 
who  had  here  been  imperfectly  purified  there  remained 
indeed  beyond  the  grave  a  place  of  expiation,  in  which 
Ood  would  deal  with  them  not  in  anger  but  in  mercy, 
not  for  their  destruction,  but  for  their  illumination  and 
purification,  that  they  might  be  completely  prepared  for 
the  Heavenly  Kingdom.  But  there,  on  high,  was  the 
immortal  home  of  the  holy,  —  the  place  of  Joy,  where 

^  Qom  est  aatem  nnbes  qoie  pnecedit  veroe  Israelitas,  nisi  yerissimiiiii 
et  suietiflsimom  corpus  tiiiim  quod  in  altari  samimnBf  in  qao  velatar 
nobis  altitndo  diei,  immensites  nugestatis  tarn,  c^jns  et  calorem  et  splen- 
dorem  mortalis  infinnitas  snstinere  non  posset,  nisi  mediatrix  nnbes  inter- 
poaita  et  ardorem  desnper  temperaret,  et  tntam  snbtns  Tiam  prsroonstraret. 
.  .  .  Selooet  enim  de  hac  nnbe  semita  qnse  dncit  ad  Titam,  semita  bnmili- 
tatis  et  patientis,  semita  mansnetudinis  et  misericordis,  et  qnidqaid  hn- 
mano  generi  per  incamationis  tuie  mysterium  revelare  dignatns  es.  — 
OptrOf  Toh  sec,  Medit.  in  Passionemt  cap.  12,  coU.  1027-1028. 


886  BERNARD  OF  CLURVAUZ: 

they  should  drink  of  the  river  of  God's  pleasures ;  the 
place  of  Splendor,  where  they  should  shine  as  the  bright- 
ness of  tiie  firmament;  the  place  of  Peace,  Wonder, 
Vision,  where  they  should  see  in  immediate  presence 
the  glory  of  God.^  And  with  those  there  assembled 
Bernard  felt  himself  in  affectionate  companionship.  He 
most  certainly  did  not  expect  any  merits  of  theirs  to  be 
set  over  against  any  ascertained  defects  in  himself.  The 
whole  delusive  doctrine  of  a  ^^  Thesaurus  Meritorum" 
or  a  ^^  Thesaurus  Supererc^tionis,"  was  not  fabricated 
till  a  century  later;  and  one  can  conceive  of  no  idea 
which  would  have  seemed  to  Bernard  more  blasphe- 
mously absurd  than  that  of  being  saved,  not  through 
personal  affiliation  with  the  Divine  character,  and  per- 
sonal adoring  love  toward  God,  but  through  the  desert 
of  other  souls  transferred  to  his  credit.  That  doctrine, 
— with  the  related  practice  of  selling  ^<  indulgences '' 
which  was  grounded  upon  it,  —  to  his  intense  conception 
of  what  was  involved  in  Divine  fellowship,  could  hardly 
have  seemed,  if  it  had  been  suggested  to  him,  anything 
else  than  an  invention  of  the  Enemy  of  souls. 

But  his  sense  of  immediate  relationship  to  the  saints 
in  light  did  lead  him,  as  I  have  suggested,  to  feel  it  a 
privilege  to  hope  that,  in  their  superior  nearness  to  God 
and  their  perfected  holiness,  they  would  intercede  for 
those  still  tarrying  here  on  lower  levels.^    And  the 

1  Open»  Tol.  prim.,  Ser.  de  DiTsnis  zri.,  zlii.,  ooU.  2851-6S»  84ei-eS. 

*  QniB  scit  tamen  a  idciroo  sablatos  fuerit,  at  nos  am  interceanonibos 
profcegat  apad  Patrem  t  Utinam  ita  dt.  Si«ium  tanteoharitatUexatdimi 
Mset  nobiacum,  at  omnia  qam  ad  corpoream  neoeaaitateiii  spectant,  liben* 
tias  mihi  qaam  ribi  cedent ;  qoanto  magia  none,  com  iUi  aamms  cbaritatif 
qii«  Deaa  est^  inhnret,  migorem  habet  in  me  gratiam  et  charitatem !  Sed 
fonitan  none  de  me  et  de  convenatione  mea  plenina  noTit  Teritatem :  nee 
compatitur,  at  aolebat,  sed,  at  yereor,  indignatnr.  —  OperOf  toL  prim.»  Ser. 
in  Obita  Hombeiti,  ooL  2268.    See  also  coL  2884  H  ok 


AS  A  THBOLOGIAN.  88T 

same  sense  of  the  supernal  relations  of  the  Chorch,  and 
of  the  glory  of  Christ  as  manifested  in  it,  led  him  to  be 
eager  to  render  to  the  Virgin  Mother  of  the  Lord,  not 
certainly  the  supreme  adoration  due  only  to  Gk)d,  but 
the  modified  homage,  the  "  hyperdulia,"  which  put  her 
soTcreign  among  the  saints. 

The  feminine  instinct,  as  I  have  said,  was  peculiarly 
strong  in  Bernard.  Religious  sensibility  and  poetic  im- 
agination blended  in  his  life,  in  intimate  accord ;  and  the 
glorified  womanhood  of  the  Mother  of  the  Lord,  to  him 
who  remembered  his  own  mother  with  ineffable  tender- 
ness, was  a  lovely  and  an  inspiring  vision.^  The  sweet- 
ness, the  gentleness,  the  benign,  protecting,  and  exuberant 
love  of  this  second  Eve,  who  had  restored  through  her 
child  all  that  the  first  Eve  had  lost  for  the  world,  in  whom 
God  Himself  had  deigned  to  repose,  he  could  not  too 
largely  or  lovingly  present.  Indeed,  language  was  not 
adequate  to  the  feeling  which  surpassed  it  Humility 
and  virginity,  both  most  perfect,  had  been  united  in 
Mary ;  the  glory  of  motherhood  with  the  lovely  glory  of 
virginal  purity.  She  was  properly  named  the  ^^  Star  of 
the  Sea ; ''  to  whom  men  might  always  look  with  joy,  and 
with  confident  assurance  of  help  and  rescue,  amid  the 
darkness,  the  anguish,  and  the  turbulence  of  life.  And 
when  he  thought  of  her  as  received  into  heaven,  by 
angels  and  saints,  and  by  the  Lord,  the  glory  of  even  the 
world  celestial  took  to  his  mind  new  splendor  and 
1 

^  BatiBboiuie,  bmiBelf  an  ardent  Roman  Gaiholic,  has  dearly  reoQgnized 
a&d  forcibly  ezpreesed  thia  spiritual  tendency  in  Bernard :  "  Bernard  avait 
conaerr^  nne  impression  profonde  de  sa  m^re;  et  ce  sentiment  Ini  fit 
mienz  comprendie,  mienz  goftter  et  appricier  le  mjrst^  de  la  Mkn  det 
eMtient.  Sa  mire  terrestre  avait  it6  ponr  Ini  comme  nne  r^y^lation  de  la 
maternity  divine;  et,  appliqnant  k  oeUe-ci  Tamoar  filial  dont  il  ^tait 
pAietr^  son  ccsur  s'Aerait  en  quelqne  sorte  naturellement  et  spontan^ment 
T«n  Maria."  --^iiC.  de  SL  Bernard,  torn.  iL  p.  101.    Paris  ed.,  1875. 

22 


888  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

charm.  It  is  impossible  to  overstate  the  affection, 
admiration,  the  trustful  and  abounding  gladness,  which 
filled  the  soul  of  the  tender  and  mighty  abbot  when  he 
thought  and  spoke  of  the  Mother  of  his  Lord. 

But  even  here  the  affectionate  and  loyal  enthusiasm 
of  Bernard  did  not  dazzle  his  judgment.  When  it  was 
proposed  by  the  canons  of  Lyons,  a.  d.  1140,  to  institute 
a  festival  in  honor  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of 
the  Virgin  herself,  perceiving  immediately  the  perils 
involved  in  it,  and  seeing  how  plainly  contrary  it  was 
to  the  earlier  and  commanding  teaching  of  the  Church, 
he  wrote  against  it  with  indignant  remonstrance.  He 
declared  the  proposed  rite  one  of  which  the  Church  was 
ignorant,  which  reason  did  not  approve,  nor  ancient 
tradition  commend.  ^^  Are  we  more  instructed  or  more 
devout  than  the  Fathers?"  he  said.  ^^It  is  perilous 
presumption  in  us,  when  their  prudence  in  such  things  is 
exceeded.  The  royal  Virgin  needs  no  fictitious  honors." 
That  she  had  been  sanctified  in  the  womb,  before  she 
was  born,  and  had  been  preserved  from  personal  sin,  he 
most  fervently  believed ;  but  if  she  was  to  be  held  to  have 
been  immaculately  conceived,  as  if  tliis  were  essential  to 
the  Divine  glory  in  the  Incarnation,  so  must  her  parents 
be  equally  held,  and  all  her  ancestors,  back  to  the  be- 
ginning; and  festivals  without  number  would  have  to 
be  established.  It  would  not  be  strange,  even,  he  sug- 
gests, if  it  should  be  afterward  declared  that  she  herself 
had  been  conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  was  the  Lord 
her  Son,  a  thing  certainly  not  thus  far  heard  of.  It  was 
not  really  to  honor  the  Virgin,  but  to  detract  from  her 
honor,  to  hold  this  notion.  Christ  alone  had  been  con- 
ceived without  sin,  whose  office  it  was  to  make  all  holy ; 
and  no  other  had  been.  The  new  proposition  showed, 
he  said,  a  presumptuous  spirit,  the  mother  of  rashness, 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  889 

fhe  sister  of  superstition,  the  daughter  of  levity ;  and 
men  were  not  to  follow  precipitately  and  inconsiderately 
the  foolishness  of  a  few  inexperienced  and  ignorant  per- 
sons. Certainly,  only  the  consenting  judgment  of  the 
whole  Church  could  authorize  such  a  novelty.^  His 
powerful  influence  checked  the  tendency  to  the  accept- 
ance and  circulation  of  the  new  doctrine.  It  was  only 
later  that  the  festival  was  established,  and  then  in  a  sort 
of  tentative  fashion.  Aquinas,^  Peter  Lombard,  Albert 
Magnus,  Bonaventura,  with  the  Dominicans,  denied  tlie 
doctrine,  or  hesitated  before  it.  Sixtus  Fourth,  at  the 
end  of  the  fifteenth  century,  a.  d.  1483,  confirmed  the 
festival ;  but  declared  only  that  the  doctrine  involved  in 
it  was  not  heretical,  while  those  who  differed  from  it  had 
the  liberty  of  their  opinions.  It  was  not,  as  you  know, 
till  December,  a.  d.  1854,  that  the  doctrine  was  defined 
and  clothed  with  authority  by  a  papal  bull  of  Pius 
Ninth,  and  required  to  be  undoubtingly  held  by  the  faith- 
ful. Against  the  doctrine  the  strongest  force  in  the 
Roman  Church  has  been,  from  the  first,  the  contrary 
testimony  of  Bernard,  and  of  those  in  sympathy  with 
him.  He  distinctly  did  not  believe  what  now  is 
presented  as  a  dogma  of  faith. 

I  have  sought  thus  to  sketch,  as  fully  as  I  could  within 
narrow  limits,  the  theology   of  Bernard,  without  the 

1  Extracts  firom  Bernard's  writings,  illustrating  what  has  been  said  in 
the  foregoing  paragraphs,  cannot  readily  be  put  into  foot-notes,  but  will  be 
foand  in  Appendix  B,  to  this  Lecture. 

*  licet  Romana  Ecclesia  conceptionem  B.  Virginis  non  celebrat,  tolerat 
tamen  oonsnetudinem  aliquarum  Ecclesiarum  illud  festnro  celebrantium. 
Unde  talis  celebritas  non  est  totaliter  reprobanda.  Nee  tamen  per  hoc 
qnod  festnm  Conceptionis  celebratnr,  datur  intelligi  quod  in  sna  concep- 
tione  fnerit  sancta ;  sed  quia  quo  tempore  sanctificata  fuerit  ignoratur. 
Celabratnr  festum  sanctificationis  ejus  potius  quam  conceptionis  in  die 
eoneeptionis  ipsius.  —  Sum.  Theol.  QiUBst,,  xxnL  art  ii. ;  Opera,  torn  iv.  p. 
120.    Ed.  Pamw,  1854. 


842  BERNARD  OP  CLAIRVAUZ  : 

Melancthon  seems  to  have  almost  reproduced  him,  though 
with  certainly  far  less  of  the  superlative  intensity  which 
belonged  to  Bernard. 

Bat  it  is  not  so  much  through  his  relation  to  any  who 
came  after  him  that  we  are  now  to  regard  him,  as  in  tiie 
expression  which  is  evident  in  him  of  the  most  vital  and 
quickening  theology  which  prevailed  in  his  time ;  mysti- 
cal, spiritual,  supremely  devout,  transcending  reason  in 
the  uplift  of  faith,  contemplating  as  its  practical  end 
the  Beatific  Vision,  and  offering  itself  as  the  Divine 
means  to  enable  men  to  attain  that.  Upon  that  theology 
fastened,  probably  most  of  us  think,  many  subsequent 
superstitions,  which  took  its  high  transcendental  con- 
ceptions, translated  them  into  mechanical  dogmas,  and 
externalized  things  which  to  Bernard  had  been  supremely 
attractive  because  spiritually  vital.  Of  his  theology,  as 
of  his  heart,  it  might  truly  be  said  that  its  home  was  in 
the  heavens.  His  ethereal  system  could  hardly  escape 
being  frozen  into  a  frightful  scheme  of  carnal  sacraments, 
purchased  absolutions,  external  salvation,  when  men  of 
an  earthly  and  frigid  spirit  put  it  into  the  forms  of 
thought  most  congenial  to  their  minds.  But  out  of  that 
theology  came  always  to  himself  immense  and  lovely  in- 
spiration. It  loosened  him  from  the  earth,  and  made 
him  partaker,  as  he  deeply  felt,  of  thoughts,  experiences, 
belonging  by  nature  to  higher  realms.  It  gave  him  a 
strange  supremacy  among  men.  What  power  on  earth 
could  frighten  him,  affined  through  Christ  to  the 
Majesty  in  the  heavens  ?    What  presence  on  earth  could 

arido,  dactoB  consaetadine  qnadAiii.  ...  In  corde  enim  semu  est  propm 
▼olantatiB,  ctiltor  avaritie,  gloria  eapidos,  ambitionia  amator ;  at  menti- 
tar  iniqnitaa  aibi,  aed  Deus  non  irridetar.  .  .  .  Sed  inTeniatar  utilia  ad 
omnia  pietaa,  et  ezercitium  apirituale.  —  Operas  toL  prim.,  Ser.  in  Aasomii. 
B.  V.  MariiB,  iU.  ooL  2142. 


A8  A  THBOLOOIAN.  848 

daunt  or  allure  him,  to  whom  the  stars  were  only  the 
diamond  dust  of  his  immortal  habitation  ?  Every  force 
of  his  soul  was  exalted  and  energized  by  the  touch  of 
this  theology  upon  him ;  and  its  ethereal  sovereign  power 
lived  for  long  in  other  minds.  Indeed,  it  never  was  lost, 
or  will  be,  from  the  consciousness  of  the  Church. 

Out  of  it  came  magnificent  hymns,  —  the  Besurrection 
Hymn  of  Peter  the  Venerable ;  the  wonderful  hymn  by 
Bernard  of  Olugni,  in  praise  of  the  Celestial  Country, 
parts  of  which  are  so  familiar  and  beloved  in  all  our 
churches ;  our  own  Bernard's  tender  and  lofty  hymns,  of 
which  all  know  the  translations, — "  O  Sacred  Head  now 
wounded,"  "  Jesus,    the  very    thought  of  Thee,  With 
sweetness  fills  my  breast ; ''  in  the  following  century  the 
^  Stabat  Mater  Dolorosa"  of  James  de  Benedictis ;  and 
the  marvellous  **Die8  Ir»,"   probably  by  Thomas  of 
Celano,  whose  voice,  as  of  royal  thunders,  has  never 
ceased  to  reverberate  in  Christendom.    It  was  the  same 
spiritual  theology  which  moulded  and  built  the  great 
cathedrals.    They  took  ornament,  no  doubt,  but  not  in- 
spiration, from  human  pride.     Dialectics  of  the  schools 
had  no  part  in  the  majestic  office  of  their  construction. 
Mere  ethical  instruction  would  have  had  no  use  for  them. 
A  rationalizing  theology  would  have  flattened  them  into 
lecture-rooms.     When  Bernard  was  preaching  the  sec- 
ond Crusade,  A.  d.  1146,  church-building  was  going  on 
with  such  absorbing  enthusiasm  that  it  formed  a  real 
obstacle  to  his  effort.    Princes,  nobles,   men-at-arms, 
high-bom  women,  with  their  own  hands  drew  to  the  ap- 
pointed sites  the  materials  for  the  beloved  work.    The 
cathedrals  of  Amiens,  Chartres,  Cologne,  Strasburg,  and 
many  others,  — the   spirit  of  this  mystical,  supernal 
doctrine  pervades  and  governs  them,  as  the  structural 
force  pervades  the  crystal    It  is  in  their  aspiring  arches^ 


844  BERNABD  OP  GLAXBYAUX: 

where  rock  rises  as  if  emptied  of  weight ;  in  the  towers, 
which  8oar  like  aerial  hymns;  in  the  windows,  which  are 
crimsoned  as  with  the  Lord's  blood,  or  which  glow  and 
shine  with  violet  and  gold,  as  if  reflecting  his  glorj ;  it  is 
in  the  transepts,  which  extend  like  the  arms  of  His 
cross;  in  the  very  crypt,  which  takes  its  significance 
from  His  stony  tomb. 

On  the  subsequent  pictorial  art  of  Europe,  the  impres- 
sions of  this  theology  survive.  There  are  pictures,  for  ex- 
ample, of  Guido  Beni  in  the  gallery  at  Bologna,  which 
seem  to  have  been  bathed  in  it.  It  continually  appealed, 
with  an  unfailing  power,  to  lofty  minds,  to  devout  and 
aspiring  hearts.  It  appeared  as  clearly  as  anywhere  else  in 
Hugh  and  Richard  of  St  Victor,  and  in  the  saintly  Bona- 
ventura.  It  was  later  essentially  reproduced  in  the 
illustrious  Chancellor  Gerson,  to  whom  at  different  times 
has  been  ascribed,  though  no  doubt  incorrectly,  the 
*^  Imitation  of  Christ ;"  who  wrote  largely  on  the  Mystical 
Theology,  while  he  also  showed  himself,  practically  as 
well  as  theoretically,  a  master  in  the  art  of  leading  little 
children  to  Christ.^  Thomas  h  Eempis  was  a  mystic, 
whose  '^  Imitatio  Christi "  has  had  wider  circulation  in 
Christendom  than  any  other  book  except  the  Bible,  and 
who  in  it  quotes  abundantly  from  the  writings  of 
Bernard.  Petrarch  was  in  his  last  years  a  mystic,  after 
the  golden  tresses  of  Laura  disappearing  from  the  world 
had  left  it  hung  with  sombre  shadows.  So  was  Francis 
de  Sales,  whose  "  Introduction  to  a  devout  Life "  com- 

1  A  la  fin  de  sa  carri^re,  apr^  avoir  ^t^  m%\i  k  tontes  lea  luttes  da 
qninzi^roe  si^cle,  assist^  an  concile  de  Bftle  et  pris  parti  pour  nne  nge 
rISforme  de  Teliae,  il  qnitta  sa  charge  de  chancelier,  se  retira  on  fnt  exil^ 
k  Lyon,  et  \k  se  fit  maitre  d*^co1e  poar  de  petite  enfants,  comma  on  le  voit 
dans  le  traits  si  x«marqnab1e  de  Parvulia  ad  Chriitum  trahendis^  de  I'art  da 
condnire  k  J^sns-Chriat  les  petits  enfonta.  —  OonsiN :  ffiiL  de  la  FhUo-- 
mifhUf  p.  2((5.    Paris  ed.,  1867. 


n 


AS  A  THBOLOGIAN.  845 

mended  itself  to  Protestants  as  well  as  to  Catholics,  and 
was  translated  in  many  tongaes.  The  same  spirit  re- 
appeared in  Madame  Oujon,  to  whom  prayer  was  ^  the 
silence  of  a  soul  absorbed  in  Gkni/'  and  in  the  devout 
and  faithful  F^nelon.  Through  the  great  Reformation 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  the  temper  if  not  the  terms  of 
this  theology  became  more  familiar  than  ever  before, 
throughout  the  world ;  and  Ouizot  found  his  philosoph- 
ical attention  arrested  and  impressed  by  ^^  the  singular 
sednctiyeness  of  those  theories  of  pure  love  which  were 
taught  at  the  court  of  Louis  Fourteenth  by  his  grand- 
children's preceptor,  at  a  woman's  instigation,  and 
which,"  as  he  says,  ^  were  zealously  preached  fifty  years 
afterward  by  President  Jonathan  Edwards,  of  New 
Jersey  College,  in  the  cold  and  austere  atmosphere  of 
New  England."  1 

The  essential  life  of  that  theology  never  will  cease  to 
be  exhibited  among  men,  or  to  do  its  transcendent  work 
upon  them,  while  the  Gospel  continues.  The  more  we 
have  of  its  temper  at  least  in  our  own  hearts,  the  more 
clearly  will  the  person  and  work  of  Christ  be  appre- 
hended by  us,  the  more  devoutly  will  the  Divine  benignity 
as  manifested  in  Him  be  adored,  the  more  shall  we  also 
in  thought  and  hope  transcend  the  world,  and  be  eager 
to  enter,  with  illumined  and  purified  spirits,  the  spheres 
of  the  celestial  life.  Bernard  was  sometimes  regarded 
by  his  contemporaries  as  in  effect  a  thirteenth  Apostle.' 
We  shall  not  accord  to  him  such  a  title ;  but  in  his 
peculiar  bent  of  feelii^,  in  many  elements  of  his  charao- 

1  Hist  of  France,  toI.  t.  p.  684.    Boston  ed. 
*  Bsronins  described  him  thus,  we  hare  seen,  four  centaries  later :  — 
''Vers  Apostolicos  rir,  immo  reras  Apostolus  missus  a  Deo,  potens 
opers  et  sermone,  illnstrans  ubiqne  et  in  omnibus  sunm  Apostolatum 
sequentibas  signis,  ni  plane  nihil  minus  habnerit  a  magnis  Apostolis."  — 
AmuU,  EecMott^  an.  115S,  torn.  ziz.  p.  7S.    Ed.  Luca,  174S. 


846  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUZ: 

ter,  and  in  macli  of  biB  doctrine,  he  will,  1  tiiink, 
naturally  remind  us  of  the  last  Apostle  who  continued 
on  earth.  As  nearly,  perhaps,  as  any  one  of  the  great 
Church-teachers,  he  approached  that  beloved  disciple 
who  wrote  of  Christ  more  sublimely  than  others,  as  hav- 
ing a  clearer  intuition  of  His  glory ;  who  saw  Him  in  the 
Apocalypse,  and  who  was,  by  eminence,  the  Apostle  of 
Love.  There  are  passages  in  the  writings  of  Bernard  to 
which  we  may  almost  wholly  apply  what  the  evangelical 
Oerman  singer  Matthias  Claudius  beautifully  said  of  the 
Gospel  of  John,  more  than  a  century  ago :  ^  "I  have  from 
my  youth  up  read  the  Bible  with  delight;  •  •  .  but 
most  of  all  I  love  to  read  Saint  John.  In  him  is  some- 
thing altogether  marvellous;  dim  twilight,  and  the 
darkness  of  night,  and  through  them,  now  and  again, 
the  swiftly  flashing  lightning ;  the  soft  evening  cloud, 
and  behind  the  cloud  the  great  full  moon,  bodily,  in  all 
her  glory ;  something  so  grandly  sombre,  and  lofty,  and 
soul-searching,  that  one  can  never  be  satisfied  ...  I 
cannot  at  once  understand  all  that  I  read.  Often  it  is  as 
if  what  John  meant  hovered  about  me  in  the  distance ;  but 
even  when  I  look  far,  into  a  wholly  obscure  place,  I  have 
still  a  foreshadowing  of  a  great,  majestic  meaning,  which 
sometime  I  shall  comprehend.  Therefore  I  seize  ei^rly 
upon  every  fresh  interpretation  of  John,  though  for  the 
most  part  they  only  ruffle  the  edges  of  the  evening  cloud, 
while  the  moon  behind  holds  on  her  tranquil  way.'' 

The  sermons,  letters,  and  treatises  of  Bernard  have 
certainly  not  the  tender  and  unsearchable  sublimity 
which  the  poet  recognized  in  the  epistles  and  the  Gospel 
of  John,  and  through  which  is  declared  to  us  the  imme- 
diate inspiration  of  him  who  wrote  them,  by  Him  whom 
they  majestically  present.    But  the  truth  of  that  Gospel, 

1  GBImmtUche  Werke,  a  L  i.  9.    Bimbaif  od.,  1841. 


AS  A  THEOLOGIAN.  847 

and  of  ihoee  epistles,  exalted  and  illumined  the  mind  of 
Bernard;  he  was  essentially  infused  with  their  spirit; 
and  it  requires  no  strain  on  the  mind  to  think  of  him 
now  as  standing  with  John  in  the  light  celestial  for 
which  both  looked,  in  the  ecstasy  of  experience  of  which 
both  here  had  fond  intimations,  in  the  presence  of 
whom  both  exnltingly  loved  and  adored ! 


848  BIBNABD  OP  GULIBYAUX: 


APPENDIX  A. 

Thb  historical  pontioii  of  Ezigena  as  a  theological  teacher  in  the 
Christendom  of  the  ninth  oentnij  is  so  positirely  nnique  that  sentences 
from  his  different  and  extended  writings  may  not  be  without  interast, 
as  illustrating  his  acute  and  daring  genius,  and  in  a  measure  his  yh^wn^^  of 
religious  thought :  — 

"  Cum  omnia  pis  perfectnque  doctrine  modus*  quo  onmium  reram  ntio 
et  studiosisaime  quaritur,  et  aperUssime  mrenitur,  in  ea  disdplina,  quae  a 
GnBcis  philosophia  solet  rocari,  sit  constitutus,  de  eg  us  diTisionibus  seu 
partitionibus  quiedam  breviter  edisserere  necesaarium  duximus.  .  .  .  Quid 
est  aUud  de  philosophia  tractare,  uisi  Yem  religionisi  qua  summa  et  princi- 
palis omnium  rerum  cauaa,  Deus,  et  humiliter  oolitur,  et  rationabiliter 
inrestigatur,  r^gulas  exponere  ?  Conficitur  inde  renun  esse  philosophiain 
reram  rellgionem,  oonversimque  yeram  leligionem  esse  reram  philoao- 
phiam."    De  Dir.  Pned.  c  i.  1  [liigne],  ooL  857. 

"  Diso.  Auctoritas  siquidem  ex  rera  ratione  prooeesit,  ratio  rero  neqna* 
quam  ex  auctoritate.  Omnis  enlm  auctoritas,  qun  rera  ratione  non 
approbatur,  infirma  ridetur  esse.  Vera  autem  ratio,  quoniam  suis  rir* 
tutibus  rata  atque  immutabilis  munitur,  nullios  anetoritatis  astipulatione 
roborari  indiget.  Nil  enim  aliud  mihi  ridetur  esBO  rera  auctoritas,  nisi 
rationis  rlrtute  reperta  reritas,  et  a  Sanctis  Patribus  ad  poeteritatis  utilita- 
tern  Uteris  oommendata.  Bed  forte  tibi  aliter  ridetur.  Mao.  Nullo  modo. 
Ideoque  prius  ratione  utendum  est  in  his,  qun  nunc  instant,  ac  deinde 
auctoritate."    De  Dir.  Nat  L.  L  69  [Kigne],  ooL  618. 

"  Nulla  Itaque  auctoritas  te  terreat  ab  his,  qun  recte  oontemplstionis 
rationabilis  suasio  edooet.  Vera  enim  auctoritas  recta  rationi  non  obsistit, 
neque  recta  ratio  rem  auctoritati.  Ambo  siquidem  ex  ono  fonte,  dirina 
ridelicet  sapientia,  manare  dubium  non  eat."    Ibid.,  col.  611. 

••  Ratio  rero  in  hoc  unirersaliter  studet,  ut  suadeat,  oertisque  reritetis 
inrestigationibus  approbet,  nil  de  Deo  proprie  posse  did,  quoniam  superat 
omnem  intellectum,  omne8((ue  sensibiles  intelligibilesque  significationes ; 
qui  melius  nesclendo  scitur ;  ctgus  ignorantia  rera  est  sapientia ;  qui 
rerios  fideliusque  negatur  in  omnibus,  quam  aflrmatnr.  Quodcunque 
enim  de  ipso  negareris,  rere  negabis ;  non  autem  omne,  quodcunque 
ISnnareris,  rere  firmabis."    ibid.,  col.  610. 

[God  does  not  know  Himself.]  "  Quoraodo  fgitur  dirina  natura  seipsam 
potest  intelligere,  quid  sit,  cum  nihil  sit  f  .  .  .  Aut  quomodo  infinitum 
potest  in  allquo  definiri  a  se  ipso,  rel  in  aliquo  intelligi,  enm  se  oognoscat 


AB  A  THEOLOGIAN.  849 

super  omne  Bnitom  et  infinitum,  et  finitatem  et  infinitetem  f  Dena  iteqne 
nmdi  se,  qnid  est,  quia  non  est  qnid ;  incomprehensilulis  qnippe  in  aliqno 
et  sila  ipsi  et  onmi  intellectoi.  .  .  .  Nescit  igitur,  quid  ipse  est»  hoc  est, 
neseit  se  quid  esse,  qnoniam  o^gnoscit,  se  nollam  eonun,  qun  in  aliqno 
cognoscnntnr,  et  de  qnibns  potest  did  rel  intelligi,  qnid  sunt,  omnino 
esse."    De  Div.  Nat.,  L.  ii.  28,  col.  689. 

*'  Nnm  eadem  latione  debemns  inspicere  omnium  Terbonim,  qua  sacra 
Seriptura  de  divina  natnra  pnBdieat,  virtntem,  nt  nil  aliud  per  ea  SBStime- 
mns  sagnificari,  pmter  ipsam  simplioem,  incommutabilem,  incompreheusi- 
bilemqne  omni  intellectu  ac  significatione  diTinam  eaaentiam  et  plusquam 
easentiam  ?  .  .  .  Non  aliud  itaque  Deo  esse,  et  velle,  et  facere,  et  amare, 
et  diligere,  et  ridere,  oeteraque  h^jusmodi,  qun  de  eo,  ut  didmus,  possnnt 
pnedicari,  sed  h«c  omnia  in  ipso  nnum  idipsumque  aodpiendum,  soamque 
inefiabilem  esaentiam  eo  modo,  quo  se  significari  sinit,  insinnant."  De 
DiT.  Nat,  L.  i.  75,  coL  518. 

"  Si  ergo  seipsam  sanota  Trinitas  in  nobis  et  in  seipsa  smat,  seipsam  et 
Tidet  et  moret ;  pro  oerto  a  seipsa  amatur,  yidetur,  moretur,  secundum 
exoellentissimum  modum,  nuIH  creature  oognitum,  quo  seipssm  et  amat  et 
Tidet  et  movet,  et  a  seipsa,  in  seipsa,  et  in  oreaturis  suis  amatur,  Tidetnr, 
moretur,  cum  sit  super  omnia,  qua  de  se  dicuntur.**    Ibid.  ool.  622. 

"IJnam  enim  ineffabilem  omnium  causam,  unnmque  prindpium,  sim- 
plex atque  individuum,  unirersaleque,  quantum  divino  spiritn  illuminati 
sunt,  contemplantes,  unitatom  dixerunt.  Iterum  ipsam  unitatem  non  in 
singulaiitate  quadam  et  sterilitate,  sed  miimbili  fertilique  multiplidtate 
contuentes,  tres  substantias  unitatis  intellexerunt ;  ingenitam  scilicet, 
genitamque,  et  procedentem."    Dir.  Nat.,  L.  i.  18,  col.  466. 

"SacnB  siquidem  Sciiptura  in  omnibus  sequenda  est  auctoritas,  qnoniam 
in  ea  reluti  quibnsdam  suis  secretis  sedibus  yeiitas  posddet.  Non  tamen 
ita  credendum  est,  ut  ipsa  semper  propriis  verborum  sen  nominnm  signis 
frnatur,  dinnam  nobis  naturam  insinnans ;  sed  qnibusdam  dmilitudini- 
bus,  Tariisque  translatorum  Terborum  sen  nominnm  modis  ntitur,  infir- 
mitati  nostra  condescendens,  noetrosque  adhuo  rudes  infantileeque 
sensus  simpUd  doctrina  erigena."    Ibid.  col.  509. 

"  Hysteria  itaque  proprie  sunt,  qnn  juxta  allQgoiiam  et  fiusti  et  dioti 
traduntur,  boc  est,  et  secundum  res  gestas  facta  sunt  et  dicta,  quia  narran- 
tur.  Similiter  sacramenta  legalium  bostiamm  et  secundum  bistoriam  facta 
sunt,  et  dicta  sunt,  secundum  narrationem.  .  .  .  £t  bac  forma  sscnmen- 
torum  allegoria  hcti  et  dictl  a  Sanctis  Patribus  rationabiliter  rodtainr." 
Com.  in  ETsng.  sec  Joan.  coll.  844-845. 

"  Nam  n  periret  natura,  peiiret  simul  et  Titinm.  Sed  Tirtute  bonitatis 
omnia  natura  oontinetur,  ne  pereat  Adbuo  tamen  malitia  permittitnr  in 
ea,  videlicet  natura,  ad  laudem  bonitatis  ex  contrario  comparatione  et  ex- 
erdtatiooe  yirtutum  rationabili  operatione,  et  pui^tionem  ipdus  natane^ 


S50  BBBNARD  OF  GLAIBYAUX  : 

qnando  absorbebitor  mors  in  Tictoria,  et  sola  bonitas  in  omniboB  et  appai«> 
bit,  et  r^gnabit,  et  ouivenaliter  eat  peritara  malitia."  De  Dir.  Nat.,  L.  L 
66,  ool.  611. 

"  Paaaionea  antem  dico  Toluptatem  et  triatitiam,  ooncapiaoentiaiii  atqoa 
timorem,  et  qua  ex  his  naacontur,  qaas  in  Tirtates  poese  mntari  dabinm 
non  est.  ...  Si  itaque  yitia  in  virtutee,  cum  sibi  inTioem  contraria  aint^ 
moreri  non  negamus;  cur  naturaa  inferiores  in  natuias  superiom,  dam 
sibi  nullo  modo  adversantur,  mirabili  qoadam  adnuatione  tranalimdi  ntga- 
yerimus  f    Satis  de  his  dictum."    Ibid.  L.  v.  25,  ooL  916. 

*'Nam  quod  natum  malum  est,  non  potest  semper  ezistere.  Natnnm 
quippe  mali  et  malitis  ntemam  esse  imposidbile  est  Substantia  aotem 
dflemonum  nunquam  peribit.  Natnra  itaque  mali  non  sunt.  •  •  •  Nam 
oomii  comiptio,  qun  in  natura  rerum  mutabiiium  intelligitnr,  ant  defectus 
peifectionia  est,  aut  de  specie  in  spedem  transitus  materin,  ant  generaliam 
in  specialia  et  spedalium  in  generalia  transmutatio,  qu«  omnia  non  mala, 
sed  mutabiiium  rerum  naturales  qualitates  et  quantitates  et  oonveniofMa 
intelliguntur.  .  .  .  Dooet  etiam,  dnmones  non  secundum  quod  annt^ 
males  esse,  ex  optimo  enim  sunt,  opUm»que  participea  easmtie,  sed 
secundum  quod  non  sunt,  mali  dicuntur.  ...  Ac  per  hoc  natuiali  neoes- 
sitate  sequitur,  quod  in  eis  est  a  summo  Deo  factum,  solummodo  in  eia  per- 
maoBurum,  nuUo  modo  puniendum,  quod  autem  ex  Deo  non  est,  illomm 
yidelicet  malitia,  periturum,  ne  in  aliqua  creatura,  evn  humaaa,  aiyta 
angelica,  malitia  possit  fieri  perpetua  et  bonitate  oontema."  Oe  Dir. 
Nat,  L.  T.  28,  colL  983-985. 


APPENDK  B. 

The  following  sentences,  from  different  parts  of  Bernard's  wiittngs, 
will  perhaps  sufficiently  illustrate  what  has  been  said  in  the  Lectun  of  his 
attitude  toward  the  homage  paid  to  the  Virgin  Haiy,  and  toward  the 
doctrine  of  her  Immaculate  Conception  :  — 

Sed  felix  Maria,  cui  nee  humilitas  defuit,  nee  viiginitas.  Et  quidem 
singularis  riiginitas,  qnam  non  temeravlt,  sed  honoravit  fecunditaa;  et 
nihilominus  specialia  humilitas,  quam  non  abstulit,  sed  extulit  feennda 
viiginitas.  .  .  .  Pulchra  permixtio  yiiginitatis  et  humilitatis ;  nee  medio- 
eriter  placet  Deo  ilia  anima,  in  qua  et  humilltaa  commendat  rii^ita- 
tem,  et  virginitas  exomat  humilitatem.  Sed  quanta  putas  Tenentione 
digna  est,  in  qua  humilitatem  exaltat  fecunditas,  et  partus  consecrat  Tir^ 
ginitatemf  .  •  .  Utinam  fluant  in  nos  aromata  ilia,  charismata  scilicet 
gratiarum,  ut  de  plenitudine  tanta  omnes  accipiamus  !  Ipsa  nempe  media- 
trix nostra,  ipsa  est  per  quam  suscepimus  misericordiam  tuam,  Deus; 
ipsa  est  per  quam  et  nos  Dominum  Jesum  in  domes  nostrss  exeipi- 


AS  A  THBOLOGIAK.  851 

mill.  .  .  •  Cradelis  nimiam  mediatrix  £ya,  per  qnain  aeipens  antiqaiu 
peetifenim  etiam  ipd  viro  yirns  infndit;  sed  fidelit  Maria,  qus  salntU 
antidotoin  et  Tiria,  et  miilieribiu  propinavit.  Ilia  enim  ministra  aeduo- 
tioniB ;  hsc,  propitiationis :  ilia  snggeBsit  pnevaricationem,  h«c  ingeasit 
redemptioneiiL  Quid  ad  Mariam  accedere  trepidet  hamana  fngilitaB  f .  .  . 
Non  est  ec|iiidem  quod  me  magis  delectet,  sed  nee  quod  terreat  magis, 
qnam  de  gloria  Yirginis  Matris  habere  sermonom.  .  .  .  Loquamar  pauca 
St  SQper  hoc  nomine,  quod  interpretatom  Maris  Stella  dicitur,  et  Matri 
Yiigini  valde  oonrenienter  aptatnr.  0  qoisquis  te  inteUigis  in  hojus  secali 
proflum  magis  inter  procellas  et  tempestates  flactuare,  quam  per  terram 
ambolare;  ne  avertas  oculos  a  fulgore  higus  sideris,  si  non  tIs  obmi 
prooellis.  .  .  .  Sed  et  illud  qois  vel  cogitare  snffidat,  qnam  gloriosa  hodie 
mnudi  Begina  processerit,  et  qoanto  derotionis  affecta  tota  in  ejus  oocnr- 
ram  coalestiam  legionam  prodierit  multitado ;  quibns  ad  thranum  gloria 
eantids  sit  deducta ;  qnam  placido  Tultu,  qnam  serena  facie,  quam  Intis 
amplexibus  snscepta  a  Filio,  et  super  omnem  ezaltata  creaturam,  cum  eo 
honore,quo  tanta  mater  digna  fuit,  cum  ea  gloria,que  tantum  decuit  Filinm. 
—  Opara,  voL  prim.,  coU.  1671,  1069,  2189-40,  2156,  2152, 1688-84,  2188. 
Honor  Bagin*^  judicium  diligit  Virgo  r^pa  false  non  ^t  honore, 
▼oris  cnmnlata  honorum  titulis,  infulis  dignitatum.  .  .  .  Ego  vero  quod 
ab  ilia  accepi,  secnrus  et  teneo,  et  tndo ;  quod  non,  scrupuloeius,  fateor, 
admiserim.  Accepi  sane  ab  Ecclesia  ilium  diem  cum  summa  reneiatione 
reoolendnm,  quo  assnmpta  de  saculo  nequam,  ccslis  quoque  intulit  cele- 
benimorum  festa  gaudiorum.  Sed  et  ortum  Yiiginis  didici  nihilomxnuS 
in  Eodesia,  et  ab  Ecclesia  indubitanter  habere  festivum  atque  sanctum ; 
firmissime  cum  Ecclesia  sentiens,  in  utero  cam  accepisse  ut  sancta  prodir^ 
.  .  .  Quid  si  alius,  propter  eamdem  causam,  etiam  utrique  parenti  ^us 
festos  honores  assent  deferendoe  f  Sed  de  ayis  et  proavis  idipsum  potest 
pro  simili  causa  quilibet  flsgitare ;  et  sic  tenderetnr  in  infinitum,  et 
festomm  non  esset  numems.  .  .  .  Solus  itaque  Dominus  Jesus  de  S^iritu 
aaneto  oonceptus,  quia  solus  et  ante  conceptnm  sanctus.  .  •  .  Alioquin 
nulla  ei  ratione  placebit  contra  Ecclesiss  ritum  pnesumpta  novitas,  mater 
temeritatis,  soror  superstitionis,  filia  IcTitatis.  .  .  .  Quss  autem  dixi, 
absque  prejudido  sane  dicta  sint  sanius  sapientia.  Romana  pnesertim 
Ecclesia  auctoritati  atque  examini  totum  hoc,  sicut  et  eaten  qua  cgusmodi 
sunt,  universa  resenro :  ipsius,  si  quid  alitor  sapio,  pantns  judicio  emen- 
dars.  —  Qpsro,  yoL  prim.,  epist  olzxiv.,  ad  Ganonicoa  Lugdunenses,  eolL 
389^-898. 


LECTUEE    VI. 


BERNABD  OF  CLAIRVAUX:  AS  A  PKEACHER. 


LECTURE  VI. 

BBBNARD  OF  CLAIBVAUX:   AS  A  PBEAGHEB. 

It  IB  a  common  impression  among  those  connected 
with  Protestant  communions  that,  whatever  else  has  ad- 
vanced or  declined  in  modern  times,  the  art  of  preaching 
has  been  carried  to  a  point  of  power  and  success  wholly 
unknown  at  an  earlier  day ;  that  while  the  pomp  of  wor- 
ship has  been  reduced,  and  the  elaborate  magnificence 
of  church-ceremonial  has  suffered  general  diminution, 
since  the  days  in  which  the  wealth  of  the  hierarchy  was 
relatively  greater,  and  in  which  principal  moral  impres- 
sions had  to  be  made  through  an  imposing  ministry  to 
the  senses,  the  sermons  of  to-day  are  beyond  question 
more  careful,  thoughtful,  energetic,  and  inspiring,  than 
they  were  of  old,  —  comparing  with  those  as  signally  as 
the  steamship  does  with  the  felucca,  or  the  palace-car 
with  the  rude  wagon  or  the  sldggish  post^oach. 

Within  important  limitations,  this  is  very  likely  a 
reasonable  impression.  It  is  true,  undoubtedly,  that 
preaching  is  more  commonly  relied  on  now  than  it  was 
six  or  seven  centuries  ago  as  the  means  of  conveying 
Divine  truth  to  those  whom  it  reaches ;  and  it  is  also 
true  that  sermons  have  now  to  address  themselves  to 
minds  more  variously  active,  more  generally  instructed, 
more  exacting  and  critical,  than  were  those  which  the 
preacher  then  usually  met.    The  natural  effect  is  to 


856  BERNARD  OP  GLAIBYAUX: 

make  the  sermons  more  diversified  in  instmction^  more 
attentive  doubtless  to  rhetorical  form,  perhaps  more 
elaborate  and  artificial  in  structure.  But  in  other  re- 
spects it  is  not  at  all  true  that  preaching  has  now  more 
power  than  it  had,  or  that  it  is  more  beneficently 
adapted  to  the  great  purposes  which  it  has  to  serve ;  and 
nothing  is  more  foolish  than  to  fancy  in  our  pride  that 
in  this  great  department  of  educating  activity  we  have 
little  to  learn  from  those  of  the  past ;  that  only  since  the 
age  of  the  Reformation  have  sermons  had  push  and 
power  in  them  to  grapple  and  stir  the  souls  of  men.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  who  now  preaches  the  Gospel,  with 
any  true  understanding  of  its  contents,  and  any  eager- 
ness of  desire  to  lift  men  by  it  toward  the  heavens, 
stands  in  an  illustrious  series,  which  began  with  the 
Ascension,  and  which  never  for  long  has  been  inter- 
rupted. Each  one  who  has  wrought,  with  a  consecrated 
spirit,  in  this  sublime  function,  will  be  found,  if  we  ex- 
amine, to  furnish  guidance,  or  a  fresh  and  noble  force  of 
impulse,  to  which  we  shall  all  do  well  to  take  heed. 

The  story  of  the  post-apostolic  preachers  in  the  early 
Christian  age,  of  their  labor  and  patience,  of  the  perils 
which  they  faced,  the  obstacles  which  they  conquered, 
and  the  signal  successes  which  they  achieved, —  if  this 
could  be  written,  it  would  surely  be  a  narrative  sur- 
passing in  fascination  the  most  brilliant  picture  of  si- 
multaneous secular  enterprise.  The  inspiration  of  the 
Divine  Master,  reaching  and  moving  human  minds,  was 
hardly  revealed  in  brighter  examples  even  while  the 
apostles  were  tarrying  on  earth;  even  Where  faithful 
men  and  women  were  dying  for  their  Lord,  in  the 
arena  or  at  the  stake.  Preaching  was  a  chief  office  of 
the  bishop,  but  presbyters  also  performed  it,  and  some- 
times laymen,  as  specially  authorized.     They  preached 


▲S  A  PREACHER.  357 

often  dailj,  and  not  unfrequently  twice  in  the  day,  in 
the  larger  churches ;  and  because  there  was  necessarily 
less  of  this  seryice  in  the  country  parishes,  it  was  re- 
garded, by  Chrysostom  for  example,  as  a  sort  of  coun- 
terbalancing advantage  that  in  those  parishes  were 
more  graves  of  martyrs,  from  which  voices  spake  in- 
audibly,  but  with  such  power  of  eloquent  persuasion  as 
living  voices  could  not  convey.^  Gibbon  himself  ad- 
mits, you  know,  the  vast  influence  exerted  by  such 
preachers,  through  their  use  of  an  agency  with  which 
heathenism  had  never  been  acquainted.'  John,  of  An- 
tioch,  better  known  through  the  world  for  fifteen  centu- 
ries by  his  applied  name  of  Chrysostom,  was  one,  at 
least,  of  the  most  eloquent  of  the  preachers  who  since 
the  Apostolic  time  have  brought  to  men  the  Divine 
tidings  of  truth  and  love.  I  should,  for  myself,  put 
him  in  most  respects  at  the  head  of  all,  for  the  admi- 
rable facility  and  variety,  the  intrepidity,  the  marvellous 
exuberance  of  thought  and  speech,  and  the  consutnmate 
power  with  which  at  Antioch  or  Constantinople  he  pre- 
sented the  heavenly  message  to  the  fickle  populace,  to 

^  "  Monover,  not  so  much  in  the  citieB  as  in  the  hamleti  has  God  as- 
sembled the  martym  .  .  .  For  they  who  inhabit  cities  are  nonrished  by 
unremitting  disoonrses,  while  they  who  dwell  in  country  districts  have  not 
the  same  large  opportunity.  Therefore  God  has  compensated  their  want 
of  living  teachers  by  abundance  of  the  martyrs,  and  has  so  ordered  things 
that  more  of  these  lie  buried  among  those  otherwise  kcking  instruction. 
They  do  not  hear  constantly  the  words  of  living  teachers,  but  they  hear 
the  voice  of  martyrs  resounding  from  the  sepulchres,  and  addressing  them 
with  a  voice  of  &r  greater  virtue.  And  that  ye  may  understand  how  moch 
greater  in  this  are  the  silent  martyrs  than  we  who  speak,  remember  how 
often  they  who  talk  about  virtue  are  themselves  nowise  proficient  in  it, 
while  these  silent  ones,  by  the  integrity  and  splendor  of  their  life,  are 
bringing  to  pass  in  others  nobler  deeds,"  et  ieq.  —  AIIEAeONTOZ  TOT 
BniSKOnOT  ^  6fuKla,  k,  r.  X.,  tom.  ii.  p.  651.     Venice  ed.,  1784. 

*  Decline  and  Fall,  vol.  iL  pp.  485-86.  London  ed.,  1848.  See  also 
Bingham,  Antiquities  of  the  Church,  B.  xiv.  chap.  4. 


358  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

the  recalcitrant  clergy,  to  the  enraged  court^  as  well  tia 
to  the  thoughtful,  cultured,  and  devouty  to  whom  his 
words  of  illuminating  instruction  were  almost  as  if 
spoken  by  angels. 

So  Basil  the  Great  was  a  preacher  of  memorable 
power  and  renown,  as  was  Gregory  Nazianzen ;  as  were, 
indeed,  almost  all  the  Greek  Fathers  whose  names  and 
writings  retain  for  us  vital  significance.  It  was  to 
the  preaching  of  Ambrose  at  Milan,  as  he  divided  the 
word  of  truth  on  each  Lord's  day  among  the  people,  that 
the  careless,  unbelieving,  and  passionate  Augustine 
came,  you  remember,  with  a  desire  simply  to  measure 
the  power  and  discover  the  secret  of  this  famous  elo- 
quence, until  he  was  led,  insensibly  to  himself,  by  the 
learning,  skill,  and  gracious  energy  of  the  discourse,  to 
accept  spiritually  what  he  had  listened  to  with  rhetoH- 
cal  admiration,  and  to  own  for  himself  the  Divine 
Master  to  whom  Ambrose  incessantly  pointed  and 
urged  him.^  Augustine  himself  was  a  preacher  of 
prodigious  resource,  of  wide  repute,  and  at  times  of 
unsurpassed  power.  He  preached  sometimes  for  days 
in  succession,  sometimes  twice  in  the  day,  with  his 
whole  soul  intent  on  leading  his  hearers  to  a  true  and 
transforming  faith  in  Christ,  and  to  the  culture  in 
themselves  of  Christian  grace.  In  all  regions  to  which 
he  came,  as  his  pupil  and  first  biographer  tells  us,  he 
preached  eagerly  and  sweetly  the  word  of  salvation. 

The  same  zeal  for  preaching,  if  not  always  the  same 
aptness  and  ability  for  it,  continued  among  the  leaders 
of  the  Church  in  the  following  centuries.     Gregory  the 

^  Confessions,  lib.  y.  c.  13  ;  lib.  vi.  c.  8.  Nearly  a  hundred  of  the  gen* 
eral  sermons  of  Ambrose  are  presenred  in  his  **  Opera,*'  with  more  than 
twenty  additional,  on  the  Psalm  cxvuL  Basil  ed.,  1567,  torn.  L  pp.  2i&- 
828.  torn,  iii  699-766. 


▲B  ▲  PBIACHBB.  869 

Oreaty  by  whom  our  pagan  ancestors  were  eyangelized, 
and  who  impressed  himself  most  powerfully  upon  the 
Middle  Age  development)  understood  to  the  full  the  in* 
flu^ioe  and  the  value  of  preaching,  and  exerted  himself, 
with  the  wise  energy  which  belonged  to  his  character, 
to  make  it  general  among  ministers  of  the  Ohurch. 
He  preached  much  himself,  and  vehemently  regretted 
that  amid  the  multitudinous  cares  constantly  pressing 
upon  him  it  was  not  possible  to  do  so  more  abundantly. 
His  numerous  and  important  writings  largely  grew  out 
of  his  sermons,  or  were  themselves  sermons  prepared 
with  assiduous  and  affectionate  care.  By  exhortation 
and  command,  as  well  as  by  example,  he  sought  to 
stimulate  others  to  preach,  whether  presbyters  or 
bishops.  He  drew  up  an  elaborate  **  Rule  for  Pastors, " 
sljowing  with  great  minuteness  of  detail,  and  with  a 
wonderful  carefulness  in  discriminating  the  various 
conditions  and  classes  of  minds  represented  in  a  con- 
gregation, how  the  truth  should  be  presented  that  it 
might  be  most  effective,  with  the  temper  of  love,  hu- 
mility, consecration,  which  the  preacher  should  main- 
tain in  himsell^     Many  of  his  instructions  are  as 

1  Begnle  Putonlii  Liber,  Opera,  toco.  u.    Paiis  ed.,  1706. 

The  art  of  teaching,  he  affinns,  is  the  art  of  all  arts.  The  life  of  the 
teacher  mnet  iUostrate  and  enforce  hie  words.  He  miut  therefore  be  pare 
in  heart,  and  lofty  in  conduct.  Aa  the  robe  of  the  ancient  priest  was  to  be 
of  porple,  and  donbly  dyed  scarlet,  with  linen  cloth,  adorned  with  gold  and 
jacinth)  to  show  the  brillisnt  and  manifold  Wrtaes  which  belonged  to  him, 
—  the  knowledge  of  wisdom  being  the  gold,  lore  the  jacinth  of  the  hue  of 
the  sky,  the  pnrple  representing  his  royal  office,  the  linen  his  parity,  — so 
most  the  preacher  of  the  Gospel  be  morally  adorned ;  and  as  beUs  were  hong 
on  the  priestly  robe,  intersperMd  with  "  red  apples,"  so  the  voice  of  in- 
straction  most  never  be  silent  in  the  Christian  pastor,  while  the  apples 
signify  the  constancy  of  his  fiuth.  He  mast  be  sympathetic  with  the 
good,  while  severe  sgainst  vices ;  mast  cultivate  hamility,  not  seek  popn- 
krity,  and  never  flatter ;  he  most  raise  walls  as  of  a  fortress  aroond  the 
minds  of  those  hsoring  him^  to  guard  them  from  temptation^  and  mnit 


360  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX: 

pertinent  to-day  as  they  were  when  first  set  forth ;  and 
perhaps  the  great  rule  of  Christian  rhetoric  has  never 
been  expressed  more  clearly  or  forcibly  than  in  his 
words:  ^^A  mind  occupied  with  external  desires  will 
not  glow  with  the  fire  of  Divine  love;  and  no  words 
will  avail  to  inspire  hearers  to  celestial  desire,  which 
proceed  from  a  cold  heart  Nothing  which  does  not 
bum  itself  can  kindle  flame  in  anything  else. "  ^    He  in 

occupy  himself  in  meditation  on  the  law  of  holiness.  He  mast  caiefiiUj 
adapt  Ids  discourse  to  those  who  hear,  as  one  touches  differently  the  differ- 
ent strings  of  a  harp  to  make  them  sound  in  harmony,  —  admonishing 
men  in  one  way,  women  in  another ;  the  young  in  one  way,  the  older  in 
another ;  distinguishing  between  the  rich  and  the  poor,  the  glad  and  the 
sorrowful,  the  ignorant  and  the  learned,  the  modest  and  the  shameless, 
the  silent  and  those  given  to  much  speaking,  whose  minds  are  often  mud- 
died with  their  own  talk ;  between  the  generous  and  the  greedy,  the  peace- 
ful and  the  quarrelsome ;  between  even  the  married  and  the  single ;  between 
those  who  will  not  b^gin  a  good  thing,  and  those  who  begin  but  do  not 
accomplish. 

The  whole  Rule  is  ftill  of  practical  suggestion,  and  his  words  at  Hub 
close  have  a  true  pathos  in  them :  "  Pulchrum  depinxi  hominem,  pictor 
foedus;  aliosque  ad  perfectionia  littus  dirigo,  qui  adhuc  in  deUctoram 
fluctibus  versor."  (iie^.  Pcutor,  quarta  pars,  Opers^  tom.  iL  ooL  102. 
Paris  ed.,  1705.) 

^  Neque  hoc  speculatori  sufficit,  ut  altum  vivat,  nisi  et  loquendo  asai- 
due  ad  alta  auditores  suos  pertrahat,  eorumque  mentes  ad  amorem  oodestia 
patritt  loquendo  sucoendat  Sed  tunc  h»c  recte  agit,  cum  lingua  ^us  ez 
vita  arserit.  Nam  lucema  que  in  semetipsa  non  ardet,  earn  rem  cui  sup- 
ponitur  non  aocendit.  Hinc  enim  de  Joanne  Yeritss  dicit :  "  Die  erst  lu- 
cema ardens  et  lucens. "  Arden s  videlicet  per  cooleste  desiderinm,  luoens  per 
verbum.  —  Horn,  in  Beech.,  lib.  L  Horn.  11,  §  7,  Opera,  tom.  i  coll.  1284. 

Pleramque  enim,  ut  prsediximus,  sacm  legis  eruditione  fulcinntnr,  do<y 
tiinn  verba  proferunt,  omne  quod  sentiunt  testimonlis  accingunt,  nee 
tamen  per  hcec  vitam  audientium,  sed  proprioe  favores  qusehint,  .  .  .  Mens 
quippe  concupiscentiis  ezterioribus  occupata  igne  divini  amoris  non  calet ; 
et  idciroo  ad  supemum  desiderinm  inflammare  auditores  suos  nequeunt 
verba,  qua  frigido  corde  proferuntur.  Neque  enim  res  qusB  in  se  ipsa  non 
arserit,  aliud  acoendit  —  MoraUwn,  lib.  viiL  in  cap.  7  Job»  tom.  1.  coD. 

276-277. 

The  last  words  are  in  harmony  with  the  old  nuudm  in  oratory;  "CiQna 

vita  fulgor,  cju^  verba  tonitma." 


AS  A  PREACHER.  861 

m 

fact  claimed  bo  much  as  requisite  for  the  fit  preacher 
that  his  bish(q)s  became  alarmed,  and  asked  in  dismay 
what  should  be  done  if  men  could  not  be  found  suffi- 
cient for  the  duty;  whether  it  might  not  be  deemed 
enough  if  men  should  know  Jesus  Christ  and  Him  cru- 
cified, while  unacquainted  with  other  learning.  His 
whole  system  of  doctrine,  while  essentially  Augus- 
tinian,  was  shaped  and  animated  by  the  practical  ten- 
dency which  came  with  his  preaching ;  and  he  who  was 
the  great  interpreter  of  the  greater  theologian  to  the 
centuries  which  followed,  commended  thus  the  scheme 
which  was  dear  to  him  to  the  minds  eager  like  his 
to  reach  men  with  the  truth,  and  to  lead  them  to  the 
Lord.^ 

The  powerful  impulse  which  he  gave  to  preaching, 
and  the  Rule  which  he  prepared  for  the  performance  of 
the  office,  were  accepted  and  familiar  two  hundred  years 
after,  at  the  Court  of  Charlemi^ne ;  while  Alfred,  after- 
ward, at  the  close  of  the  ninth  century,  himself  trans- 
lated the  Rule  into  the  old  English,  or  as  we  say,  the 
Anglo-Saxon,  for  the  benefit  of  his  clergy.  <  The  duty 
of  public  preaching  by  the  ministers  of  religion,  and 
the  intimate  relation  which  it  sustained  to  the  welfare 

1  Est  et  aliad,  fratres  cariasimi,  qaod  me  de  yita  Pastornm  yehementer 
affligit ;  aed  ne  cui  hoc  injariosom  Tideatur  fortasae  quod  aaaero,  me 
qnoqae  pariter  accoao,  quamvis  barbariei  temporU  neoeasitate  compnlaas, 
Talde  in  hia  jaceo  uiTitua.  MiDiaterium  prsBdicationia  rdinqaimiia,  et  ad 
poanam  nostram,  ut  video,  epiacopi  Tocamar,  qui  honoria  nomen,  non  Tir- 
tatem  tenemaa.  Relinquunt  namqne  Deurn  hi  qai  nobia  commiaai  aunt, 
et  tacemua.  Id  pravia  actibna  jacent,  et  correptioDia  rnanum  non  tendi- 
mna.  Quotidie  per  multaa  neqnitiaa  perennt,  et  eos  ad  infernum  tendere 
n^gfigbntm  Tidemna.  .  .  .  Usa  qnippe  eona  terrense  a  ccaleati  deaiderio 
obdnreacit  animna ;  et  dam  ipao  ano  nan  darna  efficitor  per  actionem  anculi* 
ad  ea  emoUiri  non  valet,  qn«  pertinent  ad  caritatem  Dei.  —  ffonu  in 
JB9ttng,f  lib.  L  Horn,  xvii,  Opera,  tom.  i  coU.  1602-1508.  Paria  ed., 
1705. 


862  BBBNABD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

of  tiie  Church,  were  fally  recognized  by  the  great 
French  and  German  Emperor,  and  he  omitted  no  op- 
portunity to  impress  this  duiy  on  those  whom  it  con* 
cemed.  Whether  he  could  personally  have  borne  long 
sermons,  or  those  which  touched  with  special  severity 
on  his  fayorite  sins,  may  reasonably  be  doubted.  But 
as  a  military  commander  he  required  officers  and  sol- 
diers to  be  vigilant  and  faithful;  as  a  civil  ruler  he 
would  tolerate  no  negligence,  and  no  inefficiency,  in 
his  assistants ;  and  as  the  temporal  head  of  religion  he 
wished  bishops  and  priests  to  do  the  whole  work  for 
which  they  were  solemnly  set  apart ;  and  what  that  was, 
tiie  writings  and  the  example  of  Gregory  assisted  him 
to  discern.  Alcuin,  his  chief  literary  and  theological 
adviser,  was  in  this  of  one  mind  with  him,  and  no 
doubt  stimulated,  if  he  did  not  inspire,  his  intelligent 
seal  in  this  direction.  ^  To  the  Archbishop  of  Orleans, 
who  had  received  the  pallium  from  Rome,  that  most 
prized  gift  of  the  pontiff,  Alcuin  wrote :  ^  The  pallium 
is  the  priestly  diadem.  But  even  as  the  flash  of  gems 
adorns  the  royal  diadem,  so  faithfulness  in  preaching 
ought  to  add  lustre  to  the  pallium.  That  has  its  true 
honor  in  this,  that  he  who  bears  it  stands  forth  as  a 
preacher  of  truth.  Remember,  that  the  tongue  of 
priestly  authority  is  the  key  of  the  heavenly  kingdom, 
and  the  clearest  trumpet  of  tiie  armies  of  Christ 
Wherefore  be  not  silent,  nor  hold  your  peace,  nor  fear 
to  speak,  being  assured  that  everywhere,  in  journeying 
and  in  working,  you  have  Christ  for  your  companion 

1  Alenin  addreMM  the  Emperor  himaelf  as  a  trae  ynuhat :  '*B6at» 

gent  e^jns  est  Dominns  Dens  eonim ;  et  beatns  popalos  tali  rseUvre  ezal- 

tatna,  et  tali  pmdicatore  mnmtns ;  et  atramqiie  et  g^adios  tritunphalis 

potentis  Tibrat  in  deztra  et  catholics  pradioatioiiia  taba  rasonat  in  lingua. 

—  ^%P»HH  epiat.  xfii.  torn,  i  ooL  16^. 


AS  A  PBEACHBB.  868 

and  ally. "  ^  He  exhorted  biBhope  to  be  dili^nt  in  the 
study  of  the  Scriptures,  that  they  might  be  better  fitted 
to  preach ;  he  insisted  upon  it  with  the  Emperor  tiiat 
presbyters  and  deacons  should  perform  the  office,  and 
that  the  bishops  should  not  be  allowed  to  interpose  hin- 
drances, since  the  water  of  life  must  be  freely  offered 
to  all,  and  if  the  subordinate  officers  were  allowed  to 
read  homilies  they  might  certainly  be  trusted  to  ex- 
plain them;*  and  ho  sought,  assiduously,  so  to  foster 
Christian  knowledge  among  the  laity  that  they  should 
be  prepared  with  a  true  understanding  to  take  part  in 
the  worship  of  GhxL  He  presented  his  thoughts  about 
preaching  very  clearly  in  repeated  letters  to  Gharle- 
magne ;  insisting  particularly  on  the  necessity  of  in- 
structing men  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  the 
future  life,  the  recompense  awaiting  respectively  the 
good  and  the  bad,  and  the  eternity  of  their  destiny ;  of 
showing  them  the  sins  on  account  of  which  they  would 
have  to  suffer,  and  the  good  deeds  which  would  bring 


K  PaUinm  aaoerdotale  diadgmii  est.  Sicat  r^nm  diidema  folgor  gem- 
Buumm  ornati  ito  fidncia  piadicationis  pallii  oniare  debet  honorem.  In 
hoc  enim  honorem  sanm  habet,  n  portitor  Teritatis  pnedicator  eziitit. 
Memor  esto  sacenlotaliB  dignitatis  lingoam  ooelestifi  esse  elavem  imperii, 
et  *»Vr{f{m>ii»  osstfonim  Christi  tnbam  ;  qnapropter  ne  sfleas,  ne  taoess, 
no  formides  loqni,  babens  nblqne  opens  tni  itinerisque  Christnm  sodom  et 
a^jiitorem.  —  Operas  epist.  czlTii.  col*  892. 

<  Et  nuudmi  pnedieatoms  Ecclesie  Cbristi  charitatem  Rademptoiis  nos- 
tri  per  Terba  sednls  pnedicationis  popnlU  ostendant  .  .  .  Nam  dieont 
ab  episcopis  inteidictnm  esse  presbytcris  et  diaeonibos  prndieare  in  eode- 
■iis,  dam  in  Apocalypsi  legitnr ;  Spiritns  et  sponsa  dieont,  Veni  I  Et  qui 
andiat,  dicat,  Veni !  Qui  sitit,  Teniat ;  qni  vnlt,  aceipiat  aqnam  Tit». 
.  .  .  Dicant  enim  in  qnibos  canonibns  interdictam  sit  pnsbyteris  prndi- 
can  f  Qnin  magis  legant  et  intelligant,  ab  initio  nasoentis  Eeclesia,  qnanti 
et  qnam  miiabiles  ex  direrso  deriooram  ordine  per  totam  mnndi  latitu- 
dinem  fiiere  pnsdicatores,  etiam  et  apoetolica  in  diversas  partes  trmsmiBd 
anctoritate.  .  .  .  Qoare  in  Ecdesiis  nbiqne  ab  omni  ordine  dericomm 
homiliMlegontiirf    Qmd  sst  luHnilia.  nisi  pr»dioatio  f    Miman  sst  quod 


864  BERNARD  OF  GLAIRVAUX  : 

them  to  the  favor  of  Christ,  and  to  eternal  glory ;  and 
of  carefully  inculcating  the  faith  in  the  Holy  Trinity, 
and  setting  forth  the  advent  of  the  Son  of  God  for 
man's  salvation.  All  this  presupposed  the  direction 
afterward  given  by  the  Emperor,  in  some  of  his  ca- 
pitularies, that  the  preaching  must  be  always  of  a 
sort  to  be  understood  by  the  common  people,  and  it  was 
fortified  by  the  instructions  of  Augustine.^ 

This  was  of  course  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  whole 
spirit  of  Alcuin,  who  himself  wrote  largely  on  theo- 
logical, philosophical,  historical,  and  literary  subjects, 
who  busied  himself  especially  in  securing  and  distribut- 
ing copies  of  ancient  manuscripts,  and  in  revising  the 
text  of  the  Scriptures,  and  who  could  think  of  no  gift 
so  suitable  to  be  made  to  the  Emperor,  on  his  accession 
to  the  imperial  dignity,  as  a  copy  of  the  sacred  writ- 
ings carefully  corrected  by  himself.  But  practically 
the  same  aim  was  shown  by  Leidrade,  another  of  the 

legere  licet,  et  interpretari  non  licet,  at  ab  omnibus  intelligatar  ?  —  Opara^ 
epist  clxiii.  coll.  426-427. 

1  PriuB  instruendns  est  homo  de  animn  immortalitate,  et  de  Tita  fatara,  et 
de  retributione  bonorum  maloramqiie,  et  de  stemitate  utrinaque  sortia.  . .  . 
Deinde  fides  sanctfle  Trinitatis  diligentissime  docenda  est,  et  adrentas  pro 
aalnte  bamani  generis  Filii  Dei  Domini  nostri  Jesu  Cbristi  in  banc  man- 
dam  exponendas.  Et  de  mysterio  passionis  i]lins,  et  yeritate  resarrectaonia 
et  gloria  ascensionis  in  coelos,  et  futuro  ejus  adventa  ad  jndicandaa  omnes 
gentes :  et  de  resarrectione  corpornm  nostronim,  et  de  aternitate  poenarom 
in  malos  et  pnemioram  in  bonos,  mens  novella  firmanda  eat.  —  Opera,  epist 
xxxiii.  torn.  i.  col.  190. 

De  officio  pmdicationis,  nt  jnxta  qaod  intelligera  volgoa  ponit,  aaatdos 
fiat.    An.  813,  Exc.  Canon.,  §  14. 

Other  similar  instructions  occur  in  the  Capitularies,  e.  g. :  — 

Ut  fides  Catbolica  ab  Episcopis  et  Presbyteris  diligenter  legator,  et 
omni  populo  prasdicetur.  Et  Dominicam  orationem  ipd  intelligant,  et 
omnibus  prsBdicent  intelligendam,  ut  quisqae  sciat  quid  petat  a  Deo. 

Ut  ipsi  sacerdotes,  unusquisque  secundum  ordinem  snum,  pnedicare  et 
docere  studeant  plebem  sibi  commissam.     (An.  810.) 


AS  A  PREACHEB.  865 

friends  and  associates  of  Charlemagne,  and  made  Arch- 
bishop of  Lyons,  a.  d.  798.  In  a  long  letter  from  him 
to  the  Emperor,  describing  what  he  had  accomplished 
after  some  years  in  his  office,  he  speaks  of  churches 
rebuilt,  of  monasteries,  episcopal  mansions,  of  religious 
establishments  founded,  with  other  similar  works ;  and 
he  makes  special  mention  of  schools  of  singers  insti- 
tuted that  the  psalmody  of  the  Church  might  be  im- 
proved, and  of  schools  of  readers  who  should  be  taught 
to  apprehend  the  spiritual  meaning  of  the  Holy  Books, 
and  to  make  this  apparent  to  others. 

It  was  plainly  a  purpose  of  Church-leaders  at  the 
time,  encouraged  and  set  forward  by  imperial  impulse, 
to  bring  the  meaning  of  the  Word  to  the  minds  of  con- 
gregations, regulating  their  manners,  reaching  their 
hearts,  and  confirming  and  establishing  them  in  the 
faith  by  the  agency  of  preaching.  Th^odulf,  another 
of  the  counsellors  of  the  Emperor,  and  Bishop  of  Or- 
leans from  A.  D.  784  to  a.  d.  794,  went  further,  in  the 
establishment  of  schools  for  children  and  youth  in  his 
diocese,  where  they  should  be  taught  without  fee,  ex- 
cept what  the  parents  might  choose  to  give;  and  he 
admonished  his  clergy  to  be  always  ready  to  give  in- 
struction in  the  Scriptures  to  any  who  should  seek  it. 
It  is  not  therefore  surprising  that  the  council  of  May- 
ence  should  have  decreed,  a.  d.  813,  that  if  the  bishop 
were  absent  for  any  necessary  reason  some  one  should 
always  be  present  to  preach,  on  Sundays  and  on  feast- 
days  ;  or  that  the  council  of  Aries  should  have  directed, 
in  the  same  year,  that  not  only  in  cities  but  in  country 
parishes,  as  well,  the  priests  should  preach.^ 

That  care  was  given  to  the  mere  matter  of  reading  the 
Scriptures,  beyond  what  sometimes  is  given  among  us,  is 

^  See  Neander,  HUt.  of  Church,  iii  p.  126. 


866  BERNARD  OF  CLAXBYAVZ  : 

evident  enough  from  the  instnictions  given  by  RabanuB 
MaoniB,  afterward  Archbishop  of  Mayence,  who  wrote 
on  the  subject  a.  d*  819*  He  would  not  allow  one  to 
take  holy  orders  until  he  should  have  been  five  years 
among  the  readers,  and  four  years  a  sub-deacon;  and 
even  as  a  reader  he  must  be  imbued  with  learning,  con- 
versant with  books,  instructed  in  the  meaning  of  words, 
and  able  to  read,  now  as  narrating,  now  as  lamenting 
by  turns  as  rebuking,  exhorting,  inquiring;  with  a  clear 
voice,  strong,  cultivated,  not  too  high  and  not  too  low, 
not  moathing  his  words,  and  without  affectation.  He  il- 
lustrates the  importance  of  right  reading  by  the  words 
in  the  epistle  to  the  Romans:  ^^Who  shall  lay  any- 
thing to  the  charge  of  God's  elect  ?  It  is  Gtod  who  jus- 
tifielh. "  The  latter  clause,  if  read  afiirmati vely,  would 
occasion,  he  says,  great  error.  It  should  be  read  inter- 
rogatively, that  the  answer  ^'  No ''  may  be  tacitly  sug 
gested;  and  so  with  each  of  the  following  clauses.^  It 
might  not  be  amiss  to  have  his  book  now  in  some  of 
our  Seminaries. 
In  the  dire  decadence  and  all-involving  confusion, 

1  Of  the  Beaden  he  nys :  '*  lUi  pnsdicant  popnlis  qmd  aequatar. 
Lieet  et  qnidem  leetoree  ita  miaenuiter  pronantieiit,  at  quoadem  ad 
lactam  kmentatiooemqae  compellant  Tanta  eoim  et  tarn  clara  eonim 
erit  vox,  at  qaantamyia  louge  positoram  auree  adimpleant "  —  Ik  Cleric 
Ind.,  lib.  L  e.  11. 

Qaieanqae  enim  offidom  decanter  et  rite  peragere  Tolt,  doctrina  et 
libiis  debet  eve  imbataa,  eensaamqae  ac  verboram  acientia  pe^omato^ 
ita  at  in  diatinctionibaB  eententiaram  intelligat  abi  finiator  jnnctaia,  etc 
etc  .  .  .  Diecemendo  genera  pTonantiationuni,atqaeexpriniendoproprioa 
•sntentiaram  affectai,  modo  voce  indicantiui  aimpliciter,  modo  dolentia, 
mode  indignantis,  modo  ineiepantis,  etc,  etc  Malta  aunt  enim  in 
Scriptaria,  qoA  niai  proprio  modo  pronantientar,  in  oontrariam  rece- 
dant  aententiam,  sicat  eat  illud  Apostoli :  Qais  aocatabit  adTenna 
electoB  Dei?  Deoa  qai  joatificat.  Qaod  li  qoasi  infirmttatire,  non 
■enrato  genera  pronantiationii  ran,  dicator,  magna  perrenitaa  oritar, 
etc.— iMiy  lib.  ii.  cap.  62. 


AB  ▲  FBIAGHBU  887 

in  both  Church  and  State,  which  followed  the  reign  of 
Charlemagne,  and  which  almost  threatened  the  relapee 
of  Europe  into  utter  barbarism,  the  function  of  preach- 
ing suffered  of  course  with  all  interests  of  letters  and 
of  religion.  But  with  the  partial  re-establishment  of 
public  order,  and  especially  with  the  wide  and  power- 
ful reviyal  of  the  Church-spirit  under  Hildebrand,  in 
the  eleventh  century,  two  tendencies  appeared,  each 
vigorous,  and  each  calling  for  earnest  preaching  on  the 
part  of  the  clergy.  One  of  these  was  the  strong  mission- 
ary tendency,  which  of  course  inhered  in  the  Gospel, 
and  had  never  wholly  failed  in  the  Church,  forming  in 
fact  an  inexhaustible  element  of  its  persistent  life  and 
power,  but  which  then  revealed  itself  with  fresh  and 
vast  energy,  making  religion  felt  as  a  force  in  barbar- 
ous lands  as  well  as  in  those  nominally  Christian.  The 
other  was  the  tendency  to  combat,  limits  if  possible 
conquer,  the  separatist  influences  which  were  widely 
appearing,  leading  men  out  from  all  association  with 
what  they  regarded  as  the  decayed  secular  Church, 
whose  sacraments  they  renounced,  Whose  clergy  they 
equally  hated  and  despised,  and  from  which  tiiey  turned 
either  to  the  bare  letter  of  the  Scriptures  or  to  enticing 
mystical  traditions  imported  from  the  East  The  Catha- 
rists,  Paulicians,  Petrobrusians,  more  nobly  than  others 
tiie  Waldensians,  represent  the  drifts  in  this  direction 
which  were  then  widely  in  motion,  and  which  wrought 
with  a  vast,  often  no  doubt  a  salutary  power.  They 
made  minds  freer,  hearts  more  earnest ;  and  they  gave 
a  certain  prophetic  warning  of  what  mig^t  be  expected 
from  the  profound  and  detonating  forces  lodged  in 
souls  which  God  had  touched,  whenever  the  pressure  of 
priestly  rule  should  become  too  violent  Hildebrand 
had  practically  though  unconsciously  encour- 


868  BBBNABD  OF  CLAIBTAIJX  : 

aged  these  influences,  when,  in  his  zeal  for  priestly  celi- 
bacy, he  had  urged  the  laity  to  refuse  the  sacraments 
as  administered  by  married  priests,  thus  making  the 
virtue  of  even  principal  rites  dependent  on  the  moral 
and  personal  virtue  of  those  by  whom  they  were  ad- 
ministered. He  thus  gave  impulse,  and  in  a  sense  pon- 
tifical sanction,  to  a  disposition  natural  to  men,  which 
afterward  long  and  widely  reappeared. 

We  have  thus  before  us  what  need  there  was  of  earn- 
est preaching  in  the  twelfth  century,  what  a  past  was 
behind  it,  and  what  incentives  there  were  to  it,  on 
the  part  of  men  whose  convictions  and  feelings  were 
like  those  of  Bernard;  whose  desire  was  like  his,  to 
bring  men,  and  to  keep  them,  beneath  the  power  of 
what  to  him  was  the  superlative  doctrine  of  Redemp- 
tion. Men  all  around  him  were  ignorant  of  the  truth, 
as  that  truth  was  accepted  by  his  intent  and  ardent 
spirit;  while  these  aggressive,  innovating  doctrines 
which  challenged  his  and  contravened  them,  were  con- 
stantly being  propagated  by  preaching.  It  was  only 
natural,  therefore,  that  he  should  seek  to  limit  the 
spread  of  these  novel  doctrines,  and  to  counteract  their 
impression,  by  the  same  moral  but  powerful  agency. 

The  Roman  Breviary  had  been  put,  as  I  have  said, 
into  the  form  which  it  principally  retains  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  eleventh  century,  not  long  before  the  birth 
of  Bernard,  under  the  direction  of  Gregory  Seventh,  and 
was  widely  in  use.  It  contained  the  Psalter,  the  Scrip- 
ture Lessons,  with  the  Homilies  and  the  Hymnary,  be- 
sides the  Creeds  and  the  Lord's  Prayer,  but  not  tiie 
apocryphal  legends  of  the  saints,  nor  the  invocations 
of  saints  or  the  addresses  to  the  Virgin  Mary,  which 
came  into  it  afterward.  It  gave  of  course  in  large 
measure  the  tone,  as  well  as  the  law,  to  public  worship; 


▲8  ▲  PBBACHEB.  869 

and  those  familiar  with  the  Anglican  Liturgy,  which  is 
partly  derived  from  its  rich  fulness,  with  those  more 
especially  who  have  studied  for  themselves  the  four  large 
volumes,  one  for  each  season  of  the  year,  into  which 
the  great  Roman  service-book  is  divided,  will  easily 
understand  what  a  power  it  had,  in  its  compact  and 
abbreviated  form,  for  the  religious  instruction  of  both 
clergy  and  people.  Devout  minds,  daily  perusing  it^ 
must  have  been  stimulated  to  the  office  of  preaching,  as 
well  as  directed  in  its  performance.  Printing  was 
of  course  imknown.  The  multiplication  of  manuscripts 
was  difficult  and  slow.  Oral  teaching  was  the  neces- 
sary means  for  resisting  heresy,  or  vigorously  dissemi- 
nating the  important  Church-doctrine.  It  was  therefore 
widely  practised.  In  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  cen- 
turies one  might  almost  say  that  Europe  was  full 
of  it,  whether  or  not  this  accords  with  our  common 
impression. 

Gkiibert,  abbot  of  Nogent — who  like  Bernard  had 
been  trained  by  a  holy  mother;^  who  would  not  receive 
gifts  of  gold  and  silver  for  his  monastery,  but  who  ea- 
gerly accepted  the  parchments  on  which  the  Scriptures 
might  be  transcribed;  who  was  vehement  against  all 
worship  of  relics,  and  insisted  upon  the  imperative  duty 
of  spiritual  contemplation  —  wrote  an  essay,  early  in  the 
twelfth  century,  on  the  right  way  of  making  sermons ;  * 

1  Primiim  potiflnmrnnqne  itaqae  gratias  ago  quod  pnlchnin,  sed  castam, 
iiiodeatam  mihi  matrem,  timoratissimamqae  contuleria.  —V.  Ouibebti, 
Jh  Vita  Sua,  lib.  i.  cap.  S ;  Opera  [Migne],  eol.  889. 

«  The  "  liber  quo  ordine  Sermo,"  Opera,  coU.  21-82. 

L'Mitenr  dee  oBUTiea  de  Guibert  a  mis  4  U  Ute  de  ees  iciits  an  petit 
traits  tria-m^tbodiqae  et  tr^instractif  but  la  mani^re  de  pr^cher.  Le  P. 
Alexandra  I'a  jng^  si  eolid^  qa*il  en  conaeille  la  lecture  k  tons  ceuz  qui  ae 
pr^pareot  k  ce  aaint  myst^re,  on  qui  aont  chaigte  d'annoncer  la  paiole  de 
Dim. -- Eitt.  LitUr.,  torn.  z.  p.  468. 

24 


870  BERNARD  OF  OLAIBTAUZ  : 

to  the  effect,  in  brie^  that  it  was  a  duty  not  confined  to 
bishopB  or  abbots,  but  common  to  all  who  had  the  gifts 
and  knowledge  for  it,  with  Christian  faith;  that  the 
preacher  must  regard  the  needs  of  the  simple  and  un- 
learned, and  strive  to  unite  simplicity  of  expression 
with  depth  of  thought ;  that  the  sermon  should  be  pre- 
ceded by  prayer  in  order  that  the  soul,  fired  by  love, 
may  set  forth  in  glowing  words  what  it  feels  of  Qoi ; 
that  it  ought  to  be  practical,  treating  ethical  matters, 
and  written  out  of  one's  own  experience,  since  the  spir- 
itual warfare,  like  a  battle  in  the  field,  will  be  always 
best  described  by  one  who  has  passed  through  it  The 
tract  and  its  instructions  are  well  deserving  of  modem 
attention.  The  writer  thoroughly  knew  what  good  and 
effective  preaching  was,  and  how  men  should  prepare 
for  it.  Many  others,  then  or  in  times  succeeding,  en- 
deavored in  a  like  spirit  to  accomplish  the  sacred  duty. 
Of  Norbert,  for  example,  we  know,  founder  of  tlie  order 
of  Premonstrants,  bom  a  little  before  Bernard,  converted 
from  a  careless  life,  as  Luther  is  said  to  have  been,  by  a 
terrific  blaze  of  lightnings,  ^  and  afterward  going  every- 
where in  Germany  and  France  as  a  preacher  of  repent- 
ance, discoursing  in  public,  and  then  conversing  with 
persons  in  private  on  the  state  of  their  souls,  seeking 
to  establish,  wherever  it  was  possible,  his  society  of 
teaching  and  itinerating  monks.     So  we  know  of  Bob* 

1  Gam  Tero,  eimi  miio  tarn  eqnitatartt  qoun  serica  VMtii  appanto, 
prooedent  in  prati  Yirantia  amoBnitote,  aabito  denaantor  niibea,  inaaTgast 
prooelUa  terrent  tonitma,  mioaDt  fulgoim  et  tcmpertataa ;  TiXHm  refogia 
proenl ;  spiritoa  poteatatem  tempeatatom  habena»  torroRa  incntit,  et  mar* 
tSa  horrendn  raaponaa.  .  .  .  Poat  hone  apatiom  aoigit  homo  qaaai  da  giavi 
aomno ;  aad  at  ravenna  ad  aa,  taotoa  dolore  oordia  intrinaaeiu  djoare  ecspil 
intra  ae :  Domina,  quid  me  vis  faoere  ?  £t  atatim,  qnaai  veapondantar, 
Deaine  a  male,  et  fac  bonnm  ;  inquire  paoam,  et  peraaqoara  earn.  — IHa 
A  AMirfc';  Ad.  SaneL  [aez.  Jon.^  torn.  zz.  p.  821. 


▲8  ▲  P1U5ACHBB.  871 

ert  of  Arbrissel,  devoting  himself  in  the  same  way  to 
the  proclamation  of  redemption  in  Christ;  by  whom 
the  mother  of  Peter  the  Venerable  was  led  to  devote 
herself  and  her  son  to  the  life  of  religion ;  who  exerted 
snch  an  astonishing  influence  on  men  and  women  that 
the  vicious  were  reformed,  those  at  enmity  were  recon- 
ciled, and  every  one  who  heard  felt  himself  singled  out 
from  the  others,  and  personally  addressed ;  whose  benef- 
icent miracles  wrought  on  men's  souls  were  declared 
by  his  disciples  to  be  more  amazing  than  any  which 
could  have  been  wrought  on  their  bodies.^  Of  many 
others,  traces  remain  in  history ;  as  of  an  obscure  priest 
near  Paris,  who  suddenly  was  seized  by  the  conviction 
that  he  had  been  injuring  his  people  by  his  sinful  neglect^ 
who  went  to  Paris  to  learn  what  he  should  preach,  and 
who  afterward  addressed  vast  assemblies  in  the  cily 
and  the  country,  in  all  places  of  public  concourse,  till 
he  absolutely  shook  the  nation  with  his  plain  and  fer- 
vent sermons,  and  sent  disciples  to  England  for  a  simi- 
lar work.  Of  this  man,  followed  as  he  was  by  others  of 
a  similar  temper,  and  an  equal  consecration  to  the  work 
of  calling  men  to  repentance,  ample  notices  occur  on 
^e  familiar  pages  of  Neander.'    It  would  be  well  if 


^  Senno  ejus  non  potemt  eve  non  eflBcaz,  qvk,  nt  ita  dixarim,  omni- 
hoB  omnia  erat ;  poBnitentibiu  lenia,  amteros  Titioda,  IngentilMu  blandoa  et 
faciliB ;  virga  imverentittin,  bacnlas  sennm  et  ▼aciUantium ;  pectore  geme* 
ImnduB,  ocalo  nadidaa,  coDsilio  serenns.  Hnne  profeoto  dizerim,  habitaon- 
lun  Jem  Chiisti,  templnm  et  organnm  Spiritns  aanoti,  BMponaalem  et 
Yicariam  Altiedmi  —  Ftto  B,  Roherti,  cap.  iii.  18;  Ada  Sonet,  t, 
pi  M6. 

«  Hilt  of  ChtiPch,  vol.  iv.  pp.  2(»-211. 

Id  the  Hist.  Litt^Taire  are  specially  mentioned,  witUn  a  few  tenteneeib 
aftar  Bobert  of  Arbrissel,  Bernard  de  Tiron,  Vital  de  Mortain,  Baonl  de  la 
Ffttaie,  Gerard  de  la  Sale,  Vital,  Roger  a  disciple  of  Korbert,  Erleband 
dean  of  Gambrai,  Amonl,  Hnghes,  bishop  of  Grenoble,  Gebonin  arch- 
dMOon  of  Troies,  Gregory  archbishop  of  Bordeaux,  Jean  de  BaUlme,  Itier 


872  BEBNARD  OF  CLAIBYAUZ  : 

students  of  theology,  and  all  ministers  of  religion, 
would  carefully  reflect  on  such  examples,  and  would 
study  them  more  at  large  than  in  any  concise  sunmia- 
ries;  and  they  illustrate,  with  vivid  force,  a  tendency 
of  the  time,  wide-spread  and  energetic,  the  effects  of 
which  were  often  immensely  beneficiaL  They  show  the 
rebound  of  mind,  both  in  teachers  and  in  hearers,  from 
the  condition  of  dumb  ignorance,  if  not  of  sullen  care- 
lessness of  things  human  or  Divine,  in  which  the  chaos 
of  the  preceding  centuries  had  largely  left  men.  They 
were  prophetic  of  still  better  things  to  come. 

A  little  later,  in  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, Francis  of  Assisi  entered  in  young  manhood  upon 
his  astonishing  career,  who  preached  alike  to  poor  and 
rich,  to  the  noble  and  the  obscure,  before  kings,  popes, 
cardinals,  and  before  the  Sultan,  and  who  sent  out  his 
companions,  two  by  two,  in  rough  clothing,  barefoot, 
without  money,  to  regenerate  the  world  by  proclama- 
tion of  the  truth.  He  would  not  allow  them  to  be  de- 
tained, he  would  not  be  detained  himself  even  by  the 
difficulties  presented  by  unknown  tongues.  He  seems 
to  have  felt  either  that  the  Spirit  would  give  them  mi- 
raculous utterance  in  languages  which  they  had  not 
mastered,  or  that  the  essential  meaning  of  their  mes- 
sage would  make  itself  felt  in  hearts  and  minds  to 
which  the  terms  in  which  it  was  expressed  were  unfa- 
miliar; and  that  message  he  devoutly  believed  to  be 
the  very  power  of  God  unto  salvation.*    His  missiona- 

derk  of  Auzerre,  Foalqnes  curi  of  Nemlly,  mentioned  above.  The  Hie- 
torian  says,  without  intentional  eza|;gention,  *'  Genz  d'entre  dat  Fiaafois 
qui  fierent  usage  de  lenr  Eloquence  k  annoncer  la  parole  de  Dien,  et 
prober  lee  y^rit^s  du  ealut,  sont  preaqne  eans  nombre."  — fltit  JWfc 
torn.  iz.  ppw  879-381. 

1  Admiialnli  animi  modestia  pneditna,  simplidam  et  tenoiam  ploi 
qoam  magnatom  freqaentabat  coUoqaia,  neque  diyitem  paapezi*  Tel  no- 


AS   A   PBEACHBR.  878 

ries  mingled  familiarly  with  the  common  people,  wher- 
ever  they  went ;  they  preached  wherever  the  chance  was 
offered,  in  church  or  street,  in  court-yard  or  field ;  and 
they  went  far, —  to  Greece,  Egypt,  North  Africa,  to 
Spain,  France,  Germany,  Hungary,  England.  The 
bishops  who  loved  the  souls  of  their  people  welcomed 
their  coming;  and  into  their  hands,  with  those  of  the 
Dominicans,  their  followers  and  rivals  in  the  same 
great  oflSce,  fell  practically  for  years  the  most  effective 
public  teaching  of  Christendom.  No  doubt  it  was  often 
extrava^nt,  incorrect,  as  judged  by  our  standards ;  but 
the  fiery  heart  of  Francis,  intense  yet  tender,  was  in 
it  for  years  after  he  himself  had  been  laid  to  rest ;  and 
it  is  not  possible  to  see  how  the  further  religious  devel- 
opment in  Europe,  in  the  subsequent  centuries,  could 
have  been  reached  without  this  energetic  and  wide  prep- 
aration. Bonaventura,  also  of  the  Franciscan  order, 
and  afterward  the  head  of  it,  by  whom  the  mystical 
theology  was  presented  with  rare  dialectic  skill,  as 
well  as  with  the  glow  of  an  illuminated  intelligence, 
and  whose  impression  upon  his  time,  as  I  need  not  re- 
mind you,  was  most  wide  and  profound,  was  also  an 
eager  preacher  of  the  truth,  as  he  conceived  that;  and 

bflem  nutico  pneferelMt  astimando ;  aed  omnibiis  ae  exhibebat  aBqualenip 
citxa  acceptionem  pereonanim.  .  .  .  Siepiua  dixerit  auia  religioaia,  quonim 
ego,  Frater  N.,  anua  erara,  qnod  ituri  esaemna  in  regionem  longinquam,  aU 
nee  incolaram  lingaam  intelligeremoa  ipsi,  neqae  noatra  ab  indigenia  in- 
telUgeretnr.  Cni  dicebamns :  Qaid  eigo,  Pater  bone,  iatao  via  ire,  nbi 
nee  inteUigemua  alioa,  nee  ipai  ab  illia  anmaa  intelligendi  f  At  ille  re- 
apondit,  Talia  erit  Yolantaa  DeL  .  .  .  Fratrea  illad  in  riaam  verterent,  babe- 
lentqae  pro  aomnio.  Vernm  eyentna  rei  yeritatem  pradictioniB  probavit, 
at  apparet  manifeate ;  qnapropter  pie  possumtia  credere  in  eo  foisae  apir- 
itom  propbetia.  .  .  .  Aoatera  illina  conyersatio,  aalnbria  nobia  omniboa 
pradicatio  erat ;  in  hoc  autem  yidebatar  intentna  aemper,  ut  panim 
comedena  et  pamm  qoieacena,  oraret  et  laboraret  mnltam.— Fito  A 
framsU;  Ada  Sana.,  ix.  pp.  109,  9 ;  111,  24 ;  119,  M. 


874  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUZ  : 

Thomas  Aquinas,  undoubtedly  the  profoundest  theolo- 
gian of  his  age,  one  of  the  four  great  Doctors  of  the 
Church,  not  only  preached,  but  preached  most  simply 
and  most  grandly,  preparing  for  the  office  with  fervent 
prayer,  and  striving  with  all  his  power  to  make  the  nc 
blest  thoughts  of  truth  instructive  and  impressive  to  the 
humblest  of  his  hearers.^    Even  Innocent  Third,  amid 

^  A  brilliant  picture  is  presented  by  Vaughan  of  the  appeaimnce  ol 
Bonaventnn  and  Thomas  Aquinas  before  the  University  of  Paris.  Of 
Bonayentnra  be  says  :  '*  Representing  the  sweet,  soaring,  passionate  niys* 
tidsm  of  the  seraphic  8.  Francis,  he  knew  how  to  control  love's  darting 
flames,  and  to  bring  theologic  science  to  bear  npon  the  highest  aspira- 
tions of  the  heart  His  intensely  affectionate  nature,  his  warm  Itaiiaii 
fantasy,  and  his  yearning  love  of  the  wounds  of  the  Crucified ;  his  ten- 
derness and  compassion  to  the  suffering  and  the  poor,  and  the  poetical 
bent  of  his  mystic  mind,  which  made  him  love  and  defend  Plato  as  • 
father, — aU  this,  there  ii  little  doubt,  had  before  this  day  stamped  his  trot 
imsge  on  the  plastic  and  appreciative  mind  of  the  Paris  University.  .  .  . 
His  face  ii  grave,  yet  so  tender  an  expression  beams  forth  from  it  that 
men,  when  they  once  come  under  its  influence,  are  seiied  with  a  feeling 
of  indescribable  sympathy.  There  is  one  special  mark  upon  him  which 
seals  a  supernatural  impress  on  the  whole  character  of  the  man,  —  his 
cheeks  are  furrowed  with  the  courses  made  by  frequent  tears,  springing 
from  his  burning  love  of  the  wounds  of  his  Saviour." 

Of  Thomas  he  says :  "  Hen  did  not  know,  as  l|e  sat  there  '  with  the 
striking  elegance  of  ease,'  that  in  the  dark  night,  amidst  the  shadows  of 
the  church,  he  had  wept  his  heart  out,  prostrate  before  the  altar.  They 
were  not  aware  of  the  fact,  but  for  aU  that  they  were  impressed  by  its 
affect  The  supernatural  power  which  was  in  him  spoke  to  them.  And 
when  he  began,  and  gave  out  his  thesis,  with  his  deep,  commanding  voice, 
'Thou  waterest  the  hills  from  Thy  upper  rooms :  the  earth  shall  be  filled 
with  the  fruit  of  Thy  worics,'  a  tremor  must  have  passed  across  every  heart 
in  the  great  concourse,  and  men  must  have  looked  at  each  other  with  awe^ 
admiration,  and  sa  unconscious  feeling  of  surprise.  His  whole  plan  lay 
clear  before  him.  His  central  idea  was  Christ  as  the  Redeemer  and  the 
Bestorer  of  mankind.  The  eternal  hiUs  represent  the  everlasting  Church 
of  God ;  the  upper  rooms  are  the  mansions  of  the  blessed ;  and  the  waters 
which  ars  poured  out  from  thence  are  the  supernatural  graces  and  unctions 
which  proceed  from  His  life-giving  Spirit ...  It  included  the  entire  raoge 
of  theology ;  it  treated  of  Qod  and  man,  and  their  relations. .  .  •  The  great 


AS  A   PREACHBB.  876 

the  vast  labors  and  strifes  of  his  memorable  pontificate, 
would' not  be  deterred  from  the  earnest  personal  preach- 
ing of  the  Word,  and  onlj  regretted  that  the  incessant 
occupation  of  his  mind  with  the  urgent  external  duties 
and  cares  pertaining  to  his  office  compelled  him  to  limit 
if  not  to  forego  preparation  for  such  labor.  His  ex- 
ample gave  the  highest  sanction  of  the  time  to  the  duty 
and  tiie  beauty  of  the  work  of  proclaiming,  by  oral  dis- 
course, the  message  of  Redemption  which  Christ  had 
brought 

It  was  not,  therefore,  an  unfamiliar  work  to  the  best 
and  most  active  spirits  of  Europe,  in  Bernard's  time  or 
afterward,  this  of  preaching  what  was  accepted  as  the 
Gospel  of  Christ ;  and  the  effects  of  it  were  shown,  in 
the  frequent  conversion  of  those  who  had  led  violent  or 
profligate  lives,  in  the  turning  of  those  comparatively  free 
from  gross  offences  to  a  wholly  unsecular  and  religious 

Act  has  been  acoomplished.  The  etreets  ham  egain  with  a  noisy  crowd, 
and  men  retire  to  their  ordinary  occupations,  their  hearts  soothed  with 
tenderness,  and  warmed  with  admiration,  as  they  bear  away,  imprinted  on 
their  imsginations  like  a  picture,  the  graceful  and  majestic  image  of  the 
Angel  of  the  Schools.  ~  R.  B.  Vavohan  :  lAft  and  Lahon  of  S.  7%muu 
ofAqwm,^  toI.  iL  pp.  lOi-106,  112-117.    London  ed.,  1872. 

The  testimony  as  to  his  habit  of  preparing  for  discourse  by  prayer  came 
from  those  who  knew  him  best.  "  Bainauld,  his  confessor,  knew,  for  cer- 
tain, that  the  Saint  gained  eyerything  by  prayer.  On  one  occasion,  during 
class,  the  conrersation  feU  on  the  great  Angelical.  Rainauld  burst  into 
tears,  and  exclaimed,  "  Brothers,  my  master  forbade  me,  during  his  life, 
to  tell  the  wonderful  things  he  did  !  One  thing  I  know  of  him,  that  it 
was  not  human  talent  but  prayer  that  was  the  secret  of  his  great  success. 
He  never  discussed,  read,  wrote,  or  dictated,  without  begging  with  tears 
for  illumination.*'    Tocco  says  that  he  thus  acquired  all  he  knew. 

On  one  occasion,  in  a  sermon  on  the  Passion,  in  S.  Peter's,  he  so  vividly 
brought  home  to  the  congregation  the  sufferings  of  the  Cross,  and  drew  so 
touching  a  picture  of  the  compassion,  mercy,  and  love  of  Christ,  that  his 
words  were  interrupted  by  the  passionate  crying  of  the  people.  Then,  on 
Easter  Sunday,  his  sermon  on  the  Resunection  filled  the  congregation  with 
jaUkat  trinmph.    Ibid.»  vol  i  pp.  461M60,  448-444. 


876  BBBNAED  OP  CLAIBVAUZ  : 

career,  and  in  the  widening  study  of  the  Scripture. 
Efforts  were  made,  as  we  know,  especially  in  Germany 
and  Southern  France,  to '  get  translations  of  the  Scrip- 
ture in  the  vernacular;  and  even  Innocent  Third  did 
not  discourage  these  at  first,  though  he  afterward  re* 
sisted  them  as  antagonistic  to  hierarchical  interests. 
Such  efforts  had  been  quickened  by  the  preaching  which 
preceded  them,  while  they  looked  eagerly  toward  more 
preaching  to  follow.  What  the  separatists  were  doing 
in  another  direction,  that  the  ministers  of  the  Catholic 
faith  must  certainly  do,  for  those  who  would  accept 
if  they  clearly  understood  it.  It  was  thus  only  natural 
that  Bernard,  with  his  intense  convictions,  profoundly 
impressed  with  the  peril  of  men  and  with  the  grace  and 
glory  which  met  in  Redemption,  should  apply  himself 
with  diligent  energy  to  the  use  of  this  proved  and  pow- 
erful instrument,  for  the  furtherance  of  the  aims  which 
to  him  were  supreme.  And  it  was  only  characteristic 
of  the  moral  and  mental  genius  of  the  man  that  he 
should  become,  what  he  certainly  was,  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  preachers  known  in  France  up  to  his 
time  or  since. 

His  own  humility,  however,  concerning  his  fitness  for 
the  office  was  unfeigned  and  profound.  In  the  midst  of 
his  most  astonishing  successes,  when  his  fame  was  at 
its  height,  he  held  himself  as  of  no  account ;  and  when 
the  most  signal  honors  came  to  him,  from  popular  assem- 
blages, or  from  those  in  high  station,  he  was  wont  to 
regard  these,  as  I  have  previously  said,  as  being  paid  to 
some  one  else,  with  whom  he  had  really  nothing  to  do. 
He  delighted  to  interchange  thought  with  the  simple- 
minded  among  his  brethren,  but  confessed  that  in  any 
assembly,  however  humble,  he  never  spoke  without  fear 
and  awe,  much  preferring  to  keep  silence,  except  as  b^ 


AS  A  PREACHER.  377 

was  impelled  to  speak  by  the  pricks  of  conscience,  the 
fear  of  God,  and  the  love  of  the  brethren.  But  this 
tender  humility  was  combined  in  him  with  such  abound- 
ing liberty  of  spirit  that,  as  the  same  contemporary 
reports,  he  seemed  to  reverence  every  man,  but  to  fear 
no  man.^  His  supreme  aim  and  sole  reward  were  in  the 
fruits  of  faith  in  contrite  and  believing  souls;  and  no 
applause  for  the  beauty  or  power  of  his  discourse  ap- 
pears for  a  moment  to  have  been  either  sought  or 
thought  of  by  him. 

One  cannot  doubt  that  the  key  to  his  incessant  labor, 
and  to  his  joy  in  it,  is  in  the  words  which  he  wrote  to  an 
eminent  bishop,  who  had  written  to  him  in  terms  of 
eulogy:  ^^If  the  good  seed,''  he  says,  'thrown  upon 
good  ground,  is  seen  to  bring  forth  fruit.  His  is  the  glory 
who  gave  the  seed  to  the  sower,  the  f ruitfulness  to  the 
ground,  the  increase  to  the  seed.  What  can  I  take  to 
myself  in  these  tilings  ?  Certainly  the  law  of  the  Lord 
converteth  souls,  and  not  I ;  the  testimony  of  the  Lord 
maketh  wise  the  simple,  and  not  I.  The  hand  is  praised 
—  not  the  pen  —  for  the  good  turning  of  letters  in  a 
manuscript.    I  confess,  however,  that  I  attribute  this 

1  SmmnTiB  repatabtttar  ab  omnibitfl,  mfimum  ipse  se  reputans ;  et  qaem 
■iU  omnas,  ipse  ae  nemini  pneferebat  Deniqae,  sicat  nobia  snpiua  fate- 
batnr,  inter  aammos  quosqae  honores  et  favorea  populorum,  yel  sablimiom 
peraonaram,  alteram  sibi  mutnatus  honiineiD  videbatar,  seqne  potiua  ra- 
patabat  absentem,  velat  qaoddam  Roninium  suspicatus.  Ubi*  veto  aim- 
plieiores  ei  fratrea,  nt  asaolet,  fidncialins  loqnerentar,  et  arnica  aemper 
liceret  hamiliUte  frni;  ibi  ee  inTenisse  gaadebat,  et  in  propriaoi  rediiase 
personam.  .  .  .  Nunqnam  tamen  (sicut  aippe  earn  andivimas  proteetantem) 
in  qnamlibet  bumili  coetu  sine  metu  et  re^erentia  yerbnm  fecit,  taoere 
magia  desiderans,  nisi  conscientitt  propria  stimnlia  UT^geretar,  timore  Dei* 
cbaritate  fratema.  .  .  .  Et  quidem  in  libertate  spiritos  Dei  Famnlos 
excellenter  enitoit,  cnm  hnmilitate  et  mansnetudine  tamen,  ut  qno- 
dam  modo  yideretnr  et  vereri  neminem,  et  omnem  bominem  reyereri.  — • 
Optra,  YoL  sec,  ViU  L  Ub.  iiL  cap.  7,  colL  2206»  820S. 


878  BEBNABD  OP  CLkULYAVXl 

much  to  myielf  ,  that  my  tongue  is  as  the  pen  of  a  ready 
writer."  ^  The  lessons  which  he  taught  his  disciples  of 
the  beauty  of  humility,  as  the  root  of  all  virtues  and  the 
greatest  of  all,  since  it  does  not  recognize  itself  as  being 
a  virtue  while  it  is  the  virtue  in  which  all  others  begin, 
by  which  they  are  furthered,  in  which  they  are  consum- 
mated, and  by  which  they  are  maintained,'  were  charm- 
ingly illustrated  in  all  his  life,  but  nowhere  perhaps 
more  signally  than  in  his  career  as  a  preacher.  What- 
ever he  accomplished  he  ascribed  only  to  God,  feeling 
and  saying  that  he  could  neither  will  nor  perform  any 
good  thing  except  by  Divine  impulse  and  guidance. 
He  likens  humility  in  one  of  his  sermons  to  the  auroral 
morning  light,  which  finishes  the  righ',  ind  ushers  in 
the  day,  vanquishing  the  shadows,  announcing  the  splen- 
dor.* And  that  light  lies  on  his  sermons,  as  a  beauty 
breaking  upon  them  always  from  highest  realms. 

But  this  humility,  though  so  delicate  and  profound,  did 
not  limit  or  enfeeble  the  utterance  by  Bernard  of  any 
thought  commended  to  him  as  true  and  important,  of 
any  feeling  with  which  his  soul  at  the  time  was  charged. 
There  was  no  more  trace  of  timidity  in  it  than  in  the 
temper  of  Paul,  when  he  spoke  of  himself  as  the 
least  of  the  Apostles,  who  yet  had  labored  more  abun- 
dantly than  they  all.  It  was,  in  fact,  only  an  element 
of  added  power  in  the  preaching  of  the  great  Abbot, 

• 

1  Open,  vol.  prim.,  epi«t.  cxxxt.  col.  844. 

«  See  Senno  Ouenici  Abbatifc  —  Opera,  rol.  aoo.,  col.  IWl. 

•  Anron  qnippe  flnis  est  noctis,  et  initiiim  lacia.  Aurora  ergo  qiuB 
tof^t  tenebiM,  Incem  nuntiat,  rocrito  humiliUtem  deaignat ;  quia  neat 
ilia  diem  et  noctem,  iU  ista  dividit  justum  et  peccatorem.  Nam  hinc,  id 
eet  ab  humilitate,  juatua  quisque  incipit,  et  inde  proadt  Unde  etiam  ip» 
tufora  consaigenadidtur,  ut  videlicet  Tirtutum  stractura  soigena  ab  humi- 
litate, tanquam  proprio  fundamento  erigatur.  —  (^p«ra,  toL  prim.,  8«r.  i» 
DiTwrii,  zd.  ooL  2680. 


AS  A  PBEACHBB.  879 

while  it  certainly  never  detained  him  for  half  a  minute 
from  any  service,  on  platform  or  in  pulpit,  to  which  the 
Lord  appeared  to  have  called  him.  Devout  activity  was 
not  only  a  constant  impulse  with  him,  it  was  his  solace 
and  his  restorative,  amid  many  infirmities  and  innumer- 
able cares.  He  rested  in  his  work,  like  an  onflowing 
river,  and  chafed  when  interrupted,  as  the  stream  which 
runs  fretting  among  rocks.  His  whole  theological  sys- 
tem, as  I  have  said,  implied  preaching  as  the.  great 
instrument  of  grace,  the  means,  under  God,  of  quicken- 
ing and  nurturing  in  human  hearts  the  desires,  afiPec- 
tions,  high  contemplations,  the  knowledge  of  the  Word, 
and  the  intimate  powerful  bent  of  the  soul  toward  God, 
the  result  of  ^^fiich^  should  be  in  holy  fellowship  with 
Divine  persons  and  heavenly  things,  and  at  last  in  the 
Beatific  Vision.  The  sacraments  were  also  means  for 
this,  with  an  efficacy  not  inherent,  but  derived  from  the 
Divine  appointment.  But  preaching  was  not  only  to  call 
men  to  the  sacraments,  but  to  fit  them  to  receive  these 
with  the  intelligent  and  welcoming  spirit  which  was 
needful  to  vital  profit  from  them. 

The  mystical  theology  had  always  such  supremacy  in 
the  thought  of  its  disciples,  the  goods  which  it  proposed 
were  so  transcendent,  the  honor  which  it  put  on  human 
nature  was  so  lofty  and  animating,  while  its  conviction 
of  human  need  was  so  deep  and  controlling,  that  when 
united,  as  in  Bernard,  with  a  practical  spirit,  an  active, 
exuberant,  indefatigable  genius,  and  an  earnest  desire  to 
benefit  men,  it  pushed  to  activity  in  writing  and  in 
speech  with  a  steadiness  and  a  vigor  which  perhaps  no 
form  of  doctrine  has  surpassed.  It  had  an  authority, 
too,  essential  and  vivid,  for  those  who  held  it.  Though 
a  spiritual  system,  it  was  to  Bernard  as  real  and  evident, 
almost  as  palpable,  as  the  visible  heavens ;  verified  by  its 


880  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIRVAUZ: 

own  tender  sublimitieB ;  yerified  by  the  holiness  which 
filled  it  with  incandescent  glow,  even  more  than  bj  any 
gleam  of  miracles  illustrious  on  its  front.  He  believed 
the  propagation  of  it  essential  to  the  welfare  of  man,  as 
well  as  essential,  beyond  everything  else,  to  the  mani- 
festation of  the  glory  of  Grod.  No  doubt  concerning  it 
fettered  his  powers,  or  put  a  momentary  stammer  upon 
his  discourse ;  and  he  set  it  forth,  with  fearless  and  com- 
manding freedom,  in  the  monastic  auditorium  or  in  the 
cathedral,  before  his  few  scores  of  daily  companions, 
in  the  presence  of  pope  and  cardinals,  or  before  multi- 
tudinous popular  assemblies.^  He  never  apologized  for 
the  message  which  he  declared,  any  more  than  the  sun- 
shine pauses  to  apologize  for  the  light  which  it  brings, 
or  for  the  sun  which  it  reveals.  He  believed,  and  there- 
fore spoke.  Intensity  of  conviction  was  the  force  which 
moulded  and  pushed  into  utterance  every  seimon ;  and 
if  ten  thousand  should  be  against  him  their  numbers 
would  only  make  it  more  needful  that  they  be  answered 
and  overborne.  According  to  his  assured  conviction, 
he  stood  on  rock  in  his  belief,  and  not  on  any  precarious 
scaffold  which  man  had  builded ;  and  the  preachers  of  a 

^  Sermo  ei,  qnotiea  opportnna  inveniebatar  occasio,  ad  qnaacimiqatt 
penonas  de  ndificatione  animaram,  pront  tamen  singuloram  inteUigen- 
tiam,  mores  et  studia  noverat,  quisbusque  congraens  auditoribus  eiat. 
Sic  nisticanis  plebibas  loquebatur,  ac  si  semper  in  mre  nutritas ;  sic 
cAteris  quibnsque  generibus  hominum,  velut  si  omuem  inTestigaadia 
eomm  operibns  operam  impendisset.  Literatos  apad  emditos,  apad  sim- 
plices  simplex,  aptid  spirituales  viroe  perfectionis  et  sapientis  afflnens 
docamentis ;  omnibus  se  coaptabat,  omnes  cnpiens  Incrifacere  Christo.  •  .  • 
Siqnidem  diffusa  erat  gratia  in  labiis  ejus,  et  ignitum  eloquium  ejus  vehe- 
menter,  ut  non  posset  ne  ipsius  quidem  stilus,  licet  eximius,  totam  Ulam 
dnlcedinem,  totum  retinere  fenrorem.  Mel  et  lac  sub  lingua  ejus ;  nihilo- 
minus  in  ore  ejus  ignea  lex;  r  •  .  Nam  et  confeasns  est  aliquando^  sibt 
meditanti  Tel  oranti  aacram  omnem,  yelut  sub  se  positam  et  expoaitam, 
ftppamisse  Scriptnram.  —  Opera,  rol.  sec.,  Viti,  L  lib.  iii.  ooll.  2198-H 


AS  A  PREACHER.  881 

later  time,  perhaps  of  our  own  time,  whose  principal 
creed  has  sometimes  seemed  to  be  the  uncertainty  of  all 
things,  —  whose  controlling  conviction  the  impropriety  of 
conviction,  —  might  learn  true  wisdom  from  his  example. 
His  creed  was  a  banner,  never  a  burden ;  his  faith  an 
inspiration,  never  a  shackle.  ^*I  walk  in  full  assur- 
ance,'' he  said,  ^^  in  the  faith  of  the  Creator  of  all  nations ; 
and  I  know  that  I  shall  never  be  confounded." 

Luther  declared  him,  you  remember,  without  hesitation, 
the  best  of  all  the  Doctors  in  his  sermons ;  better,  he 
added,  than  in  his  disputations,  though  even  as  a  tiieolo- 
gian  he  ranked  him  after  only  Augustine  and  Ambrose.^ 
Certainly,  if  the  great  Reformer  were  right  in  saying  that 
a  man  who  undertakes  to  serve  the  people  must  be  of  a 
great  and  high  spirit,  —  that  the  preacher  must  not  only 
have  good  judgment,  good  memory  and  wit,  and  a 
good  voice,  but  must  be  sure  of  his  doctrine,  and  be  ready 
to  venture  body  and  soul,  wealth  and  honor,  upon  the 
word ;  that  he  must  be  both  shepherd  and  soldier,  able 
to  nourish  and  to  teach,  able  also  to  defend  and  to  fight,' 
— ^I  do  not  know  where  he  could  have  found  one,  in  all 
the  past,  more  worthy  of  his  praise,  or  answering  more 
closely  to  his  description.  Nor,  indeed,  when  he  adds 
that  ^  an  upright,  godly,  and  true  preacher  should  direct 
his  discourse  to  the  poor  and  simple  sort  of  people ;  like 
a  mother,  who  sings  to  her  child,  dandles  and  plays  with 
it,  presenting  it  with  milk  from  her  own  breast,  and 
needing  neither  malmsey  nor  muscadine  for  it."  '  In  all 
these  things  Bernard  was  a  preacher  after  Luther's  own 

1  Micbelet,  Life  of  Luther  [Bohn],  p.  27S. 

'  Table  Talk,  exlvii.,  eccc.,  ccociii.  Goethe'a  words  to  Eckermanii 
practically  repeat  the  maxim  of  Luther :  that  **  if  one  wonld  write  in  a 
noble  style  he  must  first  possess  a  noble  soul."  —  CanvenaHons,  102.      * 

*  Table  Talk,  ccccuyii. 


/ 


882  BEBNABD  OP  GLAIBYAUZ  : 

heart.  The  rough  and  heroic  miner's  son,  who  fongfat  fhe 
papacy  with  the  unflagging  spirit  and  the  terrible  energy 
which  smote  Europe  asunder,  might  well  be  aware  of 
a  certain  noble  sympathy  of  spirit  with  the  chiyalrous 
mouk  who  had  done  as  much  as  any  in  the  past  to  lift 
that  Europe  out  of  the  foul  preceding  darkness  toward 
clearer  light.  The  Reformer  of  Wittenberg  was  not  a 
whit  more  fearless  in  spirit,  or  more  unsparing  in  stimu- 
lating speech,  than  had  been  before  the  Abbot  of  Clair- 
vaux.^  Any  one  who  would  influence  others  by  the 
instrument  of  public  discourse  may  well  study  each  of 
them,  with  a  mind  wide  open  to  the  suggestions  both  of 
their  struggles  and  their  success. 

It  is  of  course  to  be  observed  that  Bernard  learned  by 
practice,  only,  the  art  in  which  he  became  a  master.  It 
was  true  of  him,  as  was  long  ago  said  in  the  Hebrew 
proverb :  ^  The  wise  in  heart  shall  be  called  prudent, 
and  the  sweetness  of  the  lips  increaseth  knowledge.  ^ ' 
His  early  and  brief  studies  in  the  schools,  which  had 
failed  to  deeply  engage  his  heart  and  had  been  soon 
interrupted,  could  not  in  the  nature  of  the  case  have 
contributed  lai^ly  to  the  fascinating  eloquence  after- 
ward shown  in  him.  It  was  by  incessant  exercise  and 
self-discipline,  in  the  actual  performance  of  public  ser- 

1  Qaam  rero  placabilem  et  perenaaibilem,  qnamqae  eraditam  lingnam 
dederit  ei  Dens,  at  sdret  qaeiii  et  quando  deberet  proferre  sennoDeiiit 
qnibos  ▼idelioet  oonsolatio  rel  obsecnitio,  qaibns  exhortatio  congraeret 
Tel  increpatio ;  noeee  potenmt  aliqnatenns  qui  ipriue  legerint  aoripta, 
etai  longe  minos  ab  eia  qiii  rerba  ejus  sfepiue  andierunt  .  .  .  Inde  erat 
qnod  GermanicU  etiam  populia  loquena  miro  audiebatnr  affecto,  et  ex 
aermone  ejus  quern  intelligere,  ut  pote  alteriua  linguae  homines,  non  Tale- 
bant,  magis  qnam  ez  peritisaimi  c^'uslibet  post  eum  loquentis  interpretia 
intellecta  locntione,  aedificari  illornm  deTotio  yidebatur,  et  yerboram  qua 
magia  aentire  yirtntem ;  cigua  rei  oerta  probatio  tuneio  pectornm  erat,  el 
eflTuaio  Ucrymarnm.  —  Opera,  vol.  sec.,  Vita,  L  lib.  iii.  col.  2194. 

«  Or,  "grace  on  the  lipa  increaaeth  learning."    Prov,  1«,  21. 


▲8  A  PBBAGHBB.  888 

▼ice,  that  he  came  to  be  what  he  finally  was ;  and  the 
comparison  of  his  earlier  sermons  with  his  later  makes 
this  apparent  His  instructor  in  preaching,  as  in  the 
entire  conduct  of  his  life,  was  simply  the  Love,  toward 
Ood  and  man,  which  urged  him  to  speak  of  the  Lord's 
redemption,  in  the  way  most  moving  and  most  impres- 
sive. Enthusiasm  gave  him  both  impulse  and  training. 
The  swift  and  strong  currents  of  thought  cut  their  own 
channels,  and  took  the  rushing  or  tranquil  course  most 
natural  to  them.  The  concentrated  purpose  detected 
and  defined  the  appropriate  methods. 

At  Clairvaux  he  preached,  usually,  every  day  to  his 
assembled  associates,  at  such  hour  of  the  day  as  mi^t 
best  suit  the  general  convenience.  Such  frequent  preach- 
ing was  not  general  in  Cistercian  convents ;  but^  as  his 
physical  feebleness  limited  his  labors  in  other  direc- 
tions, he  was  the  more  eager  to  minister  in  this  way  to 
those  whose  spiritual  welfare  he  might  advance.  He 
said  himself  that  he  preached  as  much  as  he  did  only 
because  ui^ed  to  do  so  by  the  bishops,  and  by  other 
abbots;  that  he  should  not  do  it  if  he  could  take  his 
part  with  others  in  outside  work,  which  would  be  per- 
haps a  more  effectual  instruction  to  them,  as  well  as 
more  agreeable  to  his  own  conscience;  but  that  since 
he  was  hindered  from  this  by  the  manifold  infirmities 
of  his  burdensome  body,  he  took  up  the  other  form  of 
service  —  only  hoping,  as  he  touchingly  says,  that 
^  speaking,  and  not  doing,  I  may  yet  be  worthy  to  be 
reckoned,  although  the  least  of  all,  in  the  kingdom  of 
God.'i 

A  yenmteiiien  qaod  aliqnoties  yobii  loquiiDar  prater  ooiigiiatadiii«Bi 
Ordinia  noitri,  non  nostra  id  agimai  pnesomptione,  led  de  volimtato  Ten* 
mUHam  fntram  et  ooabbatum  nottrorum,  qui  id  noUt  iigangnnt.  .  .  . 
N«qiw  enim  modo  loqnerer  yobis,  si  poMem  Uboimn  ▼oUaeom.     Iliad 


884  BEBNABD  OF  OJUBYAUX: 

His  custom  was  to  meditate  his  sermons  in  his  cell, 
or  in  a  rustic  arbor  erected  in  a  secluded  part  of  the 
valley,  there  pondering  the  Scriptures,  making  his 
notes  for  the  discourses,  and  seeking  in  prayer  Divine 
assistance.  He  preached,  usually  at  least,  in  a  wholly 
extemporaneous  manner,  with  little  or  no  reference  to 
his  notes;  and  the  reports  which  we  have  of  his  ser- 
mons are  those  made  by  the  monks  who  heard  them, 
though  they  may  sometimes  have  passed  under  his  re- 
vision. ^  Of  course,  as  thus  reported,  only  fragments  of 
many  are  left, — sometimes  like  severed  arms  or  limbs 
in  a  sculptor's  studio,  here  a  head,  and  there  a  torso; 
and  we  cannot  perhaps  be  always  sure  of  their  perfect 
agreement  with  the  discourses  as  delivered,  though 
their  extreme  reverence  for  him  must  have  effectually 
prevented  the  monks  from  intentional  change  of  what 
he  had  said,  or  conscious  intrusion  into  it  of  foreign 
matter.  We  have  thus  remaining,  in  whole  or  in  part, 
nearly  three  hundred  and  fifty  reports  of  discourses,  on 
manifold  subjects,  and  of  quite  various  measures  of  in- 
terest. They  are  in  Latin,  and  were  undoubtedly  origi- 
nally delivered  in  Latin,  though  the  fact  that  among  the 

forte  Tobia  efficacius  verbam  foret,  sed  et  conacieiituB  mee  magis  acceptam. 
C»terum  qnando  id  mihi  peccatiB  meis  ezigentibiu,  et  onerod  higoe  (ot 
ipsi  scitis)  tarn  mnltipllci  infinnitate  corporis,  et  ipsa  qaoque  temporis 
necessitate  negatur ;  utinam  dicens  et  non  faciens,  in  regno  Dei  vel  mini- 
mus merear  inveniri.  Opera,  voL  prim.,  Ser.  z.  in  Psal.  Qui  Habitat,  ooL 
1887. 

^  Aliqni  fratres  ez  his  qui  me  coram  aadiere  loqnentem,  sno  stilo  ex- 
ceperunt,  et  penes  se  retinent.  Utinam,  qnod  minime  spero,  nostra  vobii 
in  aliqno  possit  esse  officiosa  rusticitas.  Opera,  vol.  prim.,  epi8t.ZTiiL ; 
eol.  168. 

Si  quominns  tamen,  scripta  sunt  ut  dicta  snnt,  et  ezcepta  stilo,  sicut  et 
sermonesc»teri,  ntftcile  recnperetnrqnod  forte  Azciderit- — Vol.  prim.,  Ser. 
in  Cantic,  Ut.  col.  2989. 

Testantnr  hoc  scripta  ejus,  qus  yel  ipse  scripsit,  vel  alii  scripseranti 
sicut  ez  ore  cgus  ezcepenint.    Vol.  sec.,  Vita,  i.  lib.  L  70,  coL  2140. 


AS  A  PBEAGHEB.^  885 

monks  must  have  been  those  not  wholly  familiar  with 
the  language,  with  the  additional  fact  that  a  translation 
of  the  sermons  into  the  French  of  the  twelfth  or  thir- 
teenth century  has  been  preserved  in  a  library  at  Paris, 
has  led  some  to  question  if  they  were  not  at  first  pro- 
nounced in  that  dialect  But  many  things  make  this 
improbable;  and  the  contrary  judgment  of  those  who 
have  minutely  examined  the  matter  is  general  and  em- 
phatic.^   When  preaching  to  the  people,  in  large  gen- 

^  None  ex  ordine  inquirendam  est,  Bemardos  sermones  suob  Istina,  an 
▼nlgari  eloqaeietor.  Nee  levis  sane  difficultas.  Istis  enim  condonibus  in* 
taifntaBe  videntnr  fratrm  laici,  illiterati,  lingua  latin»  pronus  ignari,  qoibiia 
in  nin  erat  sola  yolgaria  lingna,  qua  romana  coimpte  dicebatur  passim 
apnd  illoram  tempornm  anctores.  ...  Si  eigo  Bernazdi  sermonibos  fratrea 
iUiterati  intererant,  baudquaquam  verisimile  est,  bos  sermones  latino 
pronuntiatos  fuisse.  .  .  .  Sed  nihilominns  Bemardi  sermones  in  latina 
lingua  natos,  latino  prolatos,  atqno  eodem  prorsos  modo  ab  ejus  discipnUs 
ezoeptos  fdisse  indubitanter  existimamus.  Primo  enim  id  arguit  perpetnos 
nativnsqne  yerbomm  lusos  in  yocibus  latinis.  Deinde  ejusdem  stili  in 
•ermonibos  et  in  aliis  ejos  libris  et  tractatibos  aqualitto.  ...  In  his 
porro  ezbortationibaa,  qnas  sire  ad  ConTomos,  sen  ad  eztraneos  et  stocn- 
lares  homines  fitciebat  Yir  sanctns,  vnlgari  idiomate  procilldabio  utebattir. 
—  Opera,  Prefatio  in  tom.  tor.,  toL  prim.,  coll.  1595-1599. 

On  ne  peat  nier  sans  doute  Tanciennet^  d*nn  manuscrit  que  poss^aient 
jadis  les  Feuillans  de  Paris,  et  qui  contient  des  sermons  franfais  intitule : 
ei  muxmnunemt  li  mnium$  Saint  BenunU  ;  mais  oette  inscription  mdme, 
cette  qualification  de  Saint,  suffirait  pour  annoncer  une  traduction  ^crite 
aprte  la  mort,  apr^  la  canonisation  de  riUustre  Abb^.  Aussi  dom  Mabillon, 
dom  Cl^encet,  et  plusieuxs  autres  sarsns,  n'ont-ils  pas  craint  d'affirmer 
que  le  tazte  original  de  tons  les  sermons  de  Saint  Bernard  aujourd'hui 
eonnus  est  en  langue  latino.  —  flirf.  LitUrain  de  la  France,  tom.  xiiL 
p.  198. 

A  few  sentences  from  the  translation  referred  to  above,  taken  without 
preference,  will  at  least  show  the  accepted  form  of  a  dialect  of  the  French 
language  in  the  thirteenth  century :  — 

[On  the  Viga  of  the  Nativity,  Sermon  iii.]  "  Hui  saueres  ke  nostre 
aires  uenrat ;  et  lo  matin  uareiz  sa  glors.  Oyez  fil  d'ommee  et  ki  uiueiz 
en  teire.  Escoues  uoo !  noo  qui  estes  en  la  ponsiere  et  si  loez  i  car  li  meyea 
nient  as  malades.  U  rachateires  as  uendnz  i  li  uoye  as  ezerranz  i  et  li  uie 
as  mors.    Gil  uient  qui  tosnos  pechiesgitteratelparfontdeUmoir!  qui 

26 


886  BERNARD  OP  CULntYAUX  : 

eral  assemblies,  he  undoubtedly  spoke  in  the  language 
of  the  people;  and  one  of  the  chief  losses  which  we 
suffer  in  connection  with  his  career  is  the  loss  of  al* 
most  eyerything  pertaining  to  those  famous  discourses, 
except  the  record  of  their  effects.  His  Latin  style  is 
of  course  materially  affected  by  the  influence  of  the 
Latin  of  the  Vulgate,  of  the  writings  of  the  Church 
Fathers  in  the  West,  and  of  the  venerated  Church  for- 
mularies. It  is  not  classical.  It  is  not  graceful  and 
elegant^  like  that  of  Erasmus,  the  perfection  of  whose 
style  led  the  monks  to  doubt  the  soundness  of  his  doc- 
trine.  Bernard  belongs  to  a  ruder  and  darker  age ;  his 
style  is  more  careless  in  form,  more  rugged  and  ven- 
turesome, yet  more  ecclesiasticaL  But  it  has  a  beauty 
of  its  own,  as  well  as  a  certain  powerful  swing  in  its 
general  movement,  coming  from  the  great  personality 
behind  it;  and  after  one  gets  familiar  with  it  he  not 
only  finds  it  sufficiently  transparent  for  the  immediate 
transmission  of  the  thought,  but  feels  in  it  the  graceful, 
playful,  or  mighty  touch  of  the  commanding  and  charm- 
ing  spirit  whose  instrument  it  was.    Its  sentences  move, 

aanent  totes  noz  enfermeteu.  et  ki  a  ses  propres  etpales  nos  nportomt  a 
Vencommeiicemeiit  de  nostra  propre  dignetdt.  Gnnz  est  dai»  pozance ; 
toais  molt  plus  fait  a  meraillier  U  misericorde.  k*eiisi  aolt  QBntr ;  dl  qui 
soscorre  nos  polt." 

[From  Septaagesima,  Sermon  it.]  *'  Ensi  nen  est  mies  franche  m  nos 
nostra  nisons  i  anz  nos  conient  de  totes  pan  laitier  a  lei.  car  ele  ert  ensi 
detenne  et  enchaitineie  per  nne  maniera  de  glut  ens  terrienes  chosss.  et 
ensi  la  rabotet  om  aiera  si  cum  non-digne  des  espiritels  biens ;  k'ele  de  ees 
ne  poet  estra  rayeie  senz  dolor  ;  nen  a  oeos  estra  raceue  nes  a  nne  hon  et 
leiKment  senz  grant  gemissement.  Ci  me  font  force  cU  qui  qoierant  men 
ainime.  ensi  ke  mestien  m*est  que  iu  die  a  halte  uoiz !  iu  chaitis  horn  qai 
me  deliueirat  del  cors  de  ceste  mort ! " 

Alteste  Franzosische  Obersetzung  der  Lateinischen  Predigtea  Berabaidi 
Ton  Olairraux :  nach  der  Feuillantiner  Handscluift  in  Paris.  —  Wmkpmux 
FoiBam,  SB.  88,  181.    Erlangen,  1886. 


A8  A  PBBACHBB.  887 

not  infrequently,  like  the  tread  of  cohorts,  while  par- 
ticular words  sparkle  and  shine  as  with  the  gleam  of 
helmet  and  ensign. 

Passing  to  consider  the  substance  of  the  sermons, 
with  the  elements  of  moral  and  spiritual  power  which 
they  inyolve,  we  are  impressed  at  once,  as  everywhere 
in  the  work  of  Bernard,  with  the  candid  earnestness, 
the  magnificent  and  commanding  sincerity,  of  the  man 
who  is  speaking.  If  we  look  for  vehemence  and  rapidity 
in  his  discussion  of  subjects  we  shall  no  doubt  be  often 
disappointed.  Such  properties  marked,  unquestionably, 
his  popular  addresses,  as  we  should  have  inferred  from 
his  character  that  they  would ;  as  we  know  that  they 
did,  from  many  testimonies.  But  they  do  not  belong,  at 
least  not  in  any  special  degree,  to  the  sermons  which  he 
preached  to  the  monks  around  him,  who  had  entered 
already  the  life  religious,  and  to  whom  he  would  bring 
instruction  and  counsel,  rather  than  the  impellent  force 
of  fervent  passion.  The  sermons  are  not  languid,  or 
wanting  in  vigor,  in  their  treatment  of  themes,  or  in  the 
effort  to  impress  these.  But  also,  usually,  they  are  not 
impetuous.  They  leave  the  impression  of  Scriptural 
study,  thoughtful  reflection,  spiritual  meditation,  now 
and  then  a  sort  of  mystical  revery,  all  set  forth  in  the 
placid,  contemplative,  leisurely  speech  of  one  who  is 
equal  to  any  crisis,  but  whom  no  present  emergency 
confronts. 

They  were  preached  to  men,  of  course,  not  to  congre- 
gations of  women  and  men ;  to  men,  for  the  most  part  in 
mature  life,  not  to  children,  and  not  to  those  quick  with 
youthful  aspiration.  So  we  should  not  expect  in  them, 
what  we  certainly  shall  not  commonly  find,  the  variety, 
vivacity,  velocity  of  appeal,  which  perhaps  we  deem 
essential  to  a  great  modem  sermon.     But  the  constant 


888  BEENABD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

shadow  of  things  eternal  is  over  them  all.  The  super- 
nal destinies  waiting  for  the  preacher,  and  waiting  as 
well  for  those  who  hear  him  —  the  thonght  of  these 
never  is  absent.  He  is  constantly  intent  on  ministering 
for  Gk)d,  as  Ood  shall  give  him  grace  and  help,  to  the 
essential  immortal  life  of  the  souls  before  him.  La 
Bruydre,  in  an  essay  on  the  pulpit,  you  may  remember, 
levels  a  sharp  sarcasm  at  a  famous  French  preacher, 
supposed  by  some  to  have  been  Bourdaloue :  ^  What  a 
judicious  and  admirable  sermon  I  have  just  heard !  **  he 
says;  ^^how  beautifully  brought  forward  were  the  most 
essential  points  of  religion,  as  well  as  the  strongest  mo- 
tives for  conversion !  What  a  grand  impression  it  must 
have  produced  on  the  minds  and  souls  of  the  audience ! 
They  are  convinced ;  they  are  moved ;  they  are  so  deeply 
touched  that  they  confess,  from  their  very  souls  —  that 
the  sermon  which  they  have  just  heard  excels  even  the 
one  which  they  heard  before ! "  ^  It  is  as  certain  as  the 
continent  that  that  was  not  the  impression  left  on  his 
hearers  by  any  sermon  of  Bernard.  Whatever  else  his 
discourses  had  or  lacked  there  was  always  the  temper 
of  grave  and  serious  earnestness  in  them.  He  believed 
before  what  Joubert  in  our  time  has  well  said, — that 
"  religion  is  not  a  theology,  or  a  theosophy :  it  is  more 
than  anything  of  that  sort ;  it  is  a  discipline,  a  law,  a 
yoke,  an  indissoluble  engagement;"^  and  his  purpose 
was  to  bring  men  to  submit  themselves  wholly  and 
gladly  to  that  discipline;  to  take  up  that  yoke,  and 
bear  it  with  steady  step,  on  unbending  shoulders;  to 
fulfil  the  obligations  of  their  eternal  engagement  with 

^  Charaoten,  chap.  xvi.  p.  448.    London  ed. 

'  La  religion  n'est  ni  une  tb^logie,  ni  nne  th^oaophie ;  elle  est  phis 
que  tout  cela ;  une  discipline,  une  loi,  nn  jong,  un  indiisolable  engage 
ment.  — Pmj^  zziv. 


i 


18  A  PBEACHm.  889 

QoA.  Not  to  please,  not  to  entertain,  not  to  instruct, 
even,  without  primary  reference  to  a  governing  practical 
end,  is  the  aim  of  Bernard ;  but  to  make  Divine  thoughts 
more  clear  to  men,  and  more  profoundly  impressive 
upon  them,  that  they  may  be  readier  for  the  coming 
Tribunal,  and  for  the  supreme  and  ineffable  Presence. 

In  this  respect  the  same  spirit  appears  in  his  sermons 
which  appears  equally  in  many  of  his  letters.  He 
wrote  thus,  for  example,  to  a  young  lady  of  rank,  in 
whom  he  was  interested :  ^  Silk,  and  purple,  and  ruby 
dyes  possess  their  beauty,  but  they  never  confer  beauty. 
Surely,  a  beauty  which  is  put  on  with  a  garment,  and 
laid  aside  with  it,  is  a  beauty  of  the  vestment,  not  of 
its  wearer.  Be  unwilling  to  emulate  the  evil-minded, 
who  painfully  seek  a  foreign  charm  because  they  have 
consciously  lost  their  own.  Judge  it  unworthy  of  thy- 
self to  borrow  a  charm  from  the  skins  of  small  beasts, 
and  the  labors  of  worms ;  let  the  charm  which  is  thine 
own  suffice.  Oh,  with  what  a  lovely  bloom  does  the 
jewel  of  modesty  suffuse  maiden  cheeks!  What  ear- 
rings of  queens  can  be  reckoned  beside  it  ?  Nor  does 
obedience  to  instruction  offer  an  ornament  of  less  lus- 
tre.  With  such  pearls  let  thy  raiment  be  distinguished ! 
Certainly  that  virginal  soul  is  most  excellently  and  de- 
sirably adorned  which  becomes  almost  an  object  of 
envy  to  angels  themselves!  Some  there  are  not  so 
much  ornamented  as  loaded  with  gold,  silver,  precious 
stones,  all  the  riches  of  royal  wealtiL  These  things  all 
ihey  lay  off  at  death;  but  your  beauty  will  not  leave 
you.  These  things  which  they  carry  about  are  not 
their  own.  The  world,  whose  they  are,  will  clutch 
them  again,  when  they  who  have  worn  them  go  forth 
from  it ;  and  with  just  the  same  vanities  it  will  again 
seduce  others  as  vain  as  these.     But  your  ornament  is 


890  BEBNABD  OF  CLAntTlUX  : 

not  of  ibis  sort  It  will  remain,  as  I  have  said,  always 
safe,  because  always  your  own.  E^en  in  death  this 
beauty  lives.  A  possession  of  the  soul,  not  of  the  body, 
when  the  soul  passes  away  from  the  body,  this  shall  not 
share  the  bodily  decay. "  ^ 

In  woi*ds  like  these  we  have  presented  that  whole 
conception  of  the  relation  of  the  body  to  the  spirit,  and 
of  time  to  eternity,  which  underlies  the  sermons  of 
Bernard,  whose  solemn,  tender,  and  lofty  monotone 
breaks  up  continually  through  the  measured  and  musi- 
cal cadence  of  his  discourse.  It  was  in  the  same  spirit^ 
though  in  far  more  impassioned  and  admonitory  words, 
that  he  wrote,  as  I  have  already  noticed,  to  the  young 
kinsman  who  had  left  Clairvaux  for  the  easier  disci- 
pline, and  the  more  self-indulgent  and  luxurious  life, 
to  be  enjoyed  at  Clugni.  His  words  to  him  are  like 
the  strokes  of  a  lash,  though  one  feels  the  exquisite 
tenderness  which  is  in  them.  ^^  But  what ! "  he  says ; 
^^Is  salvation  to  be  found  in  elegance  of  dress,  and  in 
abundance  of  food,  rather  than  in  frugal  provisions, 
and  in  cheap  garments  ?  If  soft  and  warm  furs,  if  fine 
and  costly  clothes,  if  a  long-sleeved  tunic  with  an  am* 
pie  hood,  if  a  sylvan  couch,  and  a  soft,  many-threaded 
coverlet,  —  if  these  make  one  holy,  why  do  I  delay  to 
follow  thee?  But  such  things  are  poultices  for  the 
weak,  not  the  weapons  of  soldiers !  Lo,  they  who  wear 
soft  raiment  are  in  king's  palaces.  Wine,  and  tiie 
like,  honey-mead  and  fat  things,  serve  for  the  body, 
not  for  the  soul.  The  spirit  is  not  satisfied  out  ol 
frying-pans,  only  the  flesh.  Many  brethren  served  God 
in  Egypt  a  long  time  without  any  fish.  Pepper,  ginger, 
the  aromatic  cumin,  sage,  and  a  thousand  spices  of  the 
kind,  may  delight  the  palate,  but  they  inflame   lust 

1  YoL  prim.,  epUt  crui.,  ad  Sophiam  Tizgin«m,  806-309. 


AS  A  PBSACHKE.  891 

Oil,  beans,  porridge,  and  com^bread,  with  water,  maj 
be  distasteful  to  the  morally  lazy,  but  to  one  eamestlj 
striying  thej  appear  great  delicacies.  You  fear  our 
vigils  and  fasts,  and  our  prolonged  manual  labors ;  but 
these  things  are  of  no  consequence  to  one  who  meditates 
eternal  flames  I  The  remembrance  of  the  outer  darkness 
will  make  solitude  seem  not  dreadful  to  you.  If  you 
consider  the  future  account  which  must  be  giyen  for 
idle  words,  silence  will  not  greatly  displease  you. 
Eternal  weeping,  and  gnashing  of  teeth,  brought  clearly 
home  to  the  sight  of  your  mind,  will  make  a  rush-mat 
and  a  bed  stuffed  with  feathers  quite  alike  to  you.  .  .  . 
Arise,  then,  thou  soldier  of  Christ !  Arise !  Shake  thy- 
self from  the  dust,  return  to  the  combat  from  which 
thou  hast  fled ;  be  bolder  in  the  battle  after  this  flight, 
that  thou  mayest  be  only  more  gloriously  triumphant "  ^ 
It  is  perfectly  evident  that  one  to  whose  mind  eternal 
things  were  so  real  and  near  as  they  were  to  Bernard, 
while  so  surpassing  in  awfulness  or  in  beauty,  must 
show  an  influence  radiating  from  them  in  all  his  dis- 
course.  Here  was  the  dominant  key  of  his  life. 
From  this  came  the  pathos,  and  the  stately  solenmity, 
in  whatever  he  either  said  or  wrote.  It  gave  the  mighty 
diapason,  on  which  were  upborne  all  separate  aspiring 
or  reverberating  tones.  The  rapture  and  the  wail  were 
interfused  in  his  speech,  because  they  dwelt  side  by 
side  in  his  thought  As  he  wrote  to  another :  ^^  Noble 
birth,  beauty  of  person,  elegance  of  form,  the  grace  of 
youth,  estates,  palaces,  vast  household  equipments,  the 
badges  of  rank,  add  even  the  wisdom  of  ttie  world  — 
they  are  of  the  world;  and  the  world  whose  they  are 
puts  value  upon  them.  But  wherefore  should  you? 
Not  only  will  they  not  alvrays  abide,  but  not  even  for 

A  Op«i%  roL  prim.,  epist  L  oolL  10^110. 


892  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUZ  : 

long.  Only  briefly  canst  thou  possess  them,  since  few 
are  always  the  days  of  man.  The  world  itself  pasaes 
away,  with  all  its  lusts ;  but  it  sends  thee  from  it,  be- 
fore it  passes  itself.  Why  should  a  love  immeasurably 
delight  thee,  which  must  inevitably  terminate  so  soon  ? 
For  the  things  which  I  seek  in  thee,  or  rather  for  thee, 
are  not  of  the  body,  nor  for  time  alone ;  therefore  they 
do  not  die  with  the  body,  nor  disappear  with  the  pass- 
ing years ;  indeed,  they  delight  the  more  when  the  body 
has  been  left ;  they  endure  when  time  has  ended.  They 
are  the  things  which  eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  the  ear 
heard,  nor  hath  it  entered  man's  heart  to  conceive. "  ^ 

By  reason  of  this  intimate  and  incessant  conviction 
on  the  part  of  Bernard,  his  sermons,  however  deliberate 
or  discursive  in  their  general  movement,  are  always  in- 
stinct with  moral  earnestness.  We  may  not  perhaps 
be  impressed  by  this  at  firsl^  reading  tibem  in  the  at- 
mosphere of  a  different  century,  and  in  a  tongue  not 
wholly  familiar.  But  more  and  more  we  come  to  per- 
ceive it;  while  to  those  to  whom,  as  to  himself,  the 
mystical  theology  was  the  supreme  truth,  who  shared  his 
spirit,  and  over  whom  brooded,  as  over  himself,  the 
nearing  shadows  of  the  tremendous  Hereafter,  each 
sentence  was  freighted  with  spiritual  meaning  and  was 
alive  with  emotional  force.  One  cannot  but  feel  this 
as  he  walks  thoughtfully  in  the  winding  passages  of  his 
abundant  and  various  teaching.  Single  sermons  may 
sometimes  disappoint ;  but  the  entire  collection  inevit- 
ably reminds  one,  as  does  the  whole  system  of  doctrine 
which  they  utter,  of  the  rhythmic  and  solemn  medisdval 
church :  very  unlike,  certainly,  to  a  Roman  basilica,  or 
a  gay  and  graceful  modern  lecture-room,  but  with  a 
grand  majesty  and  harmony  in  the  dim  aisles  and  lofty 

1  YoL  prim.,  eplst  ctIL  oolL  S8^29a 


A8  A  PBBACHm.  S98 

nave,  in  portals  crowded  with  faces  and  figures  of  weU 
coming  saints,  in  emblazoned  windows  gleaming  with 
legends,  in  even  the  grotesque  and  uncouth  figures 
wrought  sometimes  into  capital  or  cornice,  or  in  the 
hideous  grace  of  the  gargoyle.  Such  a  structure  is 
essentially  one,  from  crypt  to  cross.  It  is  dusky  with 
mystery.  It  is  exultant  with  aspiration.  One  spirit 
has  lifted  its  vertical  lines,  and  cut  the  curve  of  its 
swift  arches,  has  carved  its  tablets,  and  moulded  its 
lovely  or  lordly  decoration.  Bernard's  sermons  are 
equally  one,  in  all  the  varieties  of  subjects  which  they 
treat,  because  one  superlative  system  of  Faith,  devoutly 
held,  pervades  and  determines  them. 

The  speaker  is  in  most  serious  earnest,  and  every- 
thing is  subordinate  to  an  omnipresent  spiritual  pur- 
pose. His  errand  in  the  world  is  to  extend  the  kingdom 
of  Qod ;  to  limit,  and  as  far  as  he  may  to  destroy,  the 
kingdom  of  evil.  He  is  never  an  attitudinizing  speaker, 
seeking  to  attract  admiration  to  himsell  I  verily  think 
that  ApoUyon  himself  would  have  seemed  to  him  less 
detestable,  certainly  less  despicable,  than  such  a  crea- 
ture in  the  pulpit !  He  is  not  altogether,  tibough  he  is 
in  part,  a  meditative  teacher.  He  is,  above  all,  a 
minister  of  Ood,  to  whom  it  belongs,  with  all  his 
knowledge,  all  his  power,  to  lift  toward  the  Holy  One 
the  weak  and  wavering  souls  of  men.  He  wanted  noth- 
ing to  stand,  therefore,  between  himself  and  his  hearers, 
interfering  with  the  full  impression  of  the  truth.  On 
the  subject  of  church-music  he  was  almost  a  radical. 
So  he  wrote  to  the  monks  of  Monstier-Ramey  [Arrema- 
rensis]  words  which  might  well  be  inscribed  to-day  on 
the  walls  of  every  choir-gallery :  **  The  feeling  clearly 
expressed  [in  music],"  he  says,  ^^  should  reflect  the 
splendor  of  truth,  should  ring  with  the  tone  of  the 


1 


894  BflRNABD  OF  CLAIBTAITX  : 

spirit  of  righteousnesB,  should  persuade  to  humility, 
should  teach  tranquillity ;  imparting  equally  the  light 
of  truth  to  the  minds  of  hearers,  grace  to  their  man- 
ners, a  spiritual  energy  to  overcome  vice,  devout  ani- 
mation to  the  affections.  The  singing  should  be  full  of 
gravity,  giving  no  echo  either  to  wantonness  or  to  rude- 
ness; sweet,  while  not  trivial;  charming  to  the  ear, 
but  only  that  it  may  move  the  heart  It  should  not 
enfeeble  but  enforce  the  sentiment  of  the  words.  It  is 
no  light  loss  of  spiritual  grace, "  he  adds,  ^^  when  one  is 
detained  by  the  quick  and  airy  movement  of  the  song 
from  the  benefit  which  belongs  to  the  things  it  ex- 
presses ;  when  one  is  led  more  closely  to  attend  to  the 
winding  variety  of  mingling  tones  than  to  the  realities 
with  subtle  modulation  conveyed  upon  them. "  ^  No  wise 
modem  bishop,  no  Puritan  minister,  could  have  stated 
the  rule  in  the  long  argument  between  pulpit  and  choir 
with  sharper  distinctness,  or  more  careful  discretion, 
that  did  this  intense,  meditative  monk. 

The  earnestness  of  the  practical  purpose  in  Bernard 
led  him  of  course  to  use  the  Scriptures  very  largely  in 
his  teaching,  and  so  to  add  vastly  to  its  richness  and 
unction.  It  is  an  old  saying,  attributed  to  Themis- 
tocles,  that  speech  is  like  a  tapestry  unrolled,  whereon 
the  imagery  appears  in  figure ;  while  thought  unexpressed 
contains  the  same  figures  hidden  in  folds.  The  aim  of 
Bernard's  preaching  was  to  exhibit  clearly  the  figures,  of 
crimson,  violet,  gold,  which  seemed  to  him  embroidered 
on  the  Scripture,  with  those  which  contrasted  them,  of 
infernal  blackness  and  fire ;  and  he  was  certainly  right 
in  feeling  that  thus  his  discourse  would  reach  its  ulti- 
mate fruitful  power.  Of  course  the  Scripture  was  used 
for  this  purpose  under  his  theory  of  the  mystical  sense, 

^  Epbt  occxoriii.,  Open,  toL  prim.,  ooL  716. 


A8  A  PBBAGHIB.  896 

which  only  the  devout  could  apprehend;  and  this,  no 
doubt,  often  leads  him  into  what  to  us  appear  fond  con- 
ceits, perhaps  sometimes  preposterous  fancies.  But  in 
that  age,  when  the  intellectual  consciousness  of  men 
was  but  half  awakened,  when  history  was  known  but 
vaguely  and  imperfectly,  and  science  not  at  all,  and 
when  the  entire  atmosphere  of  society  was  charged,  with 
fancies  and  imaginative  illusions,  such  shadowy,  enig- 
matic interpretations  of  the  Scripture  seemed  natural 
enough,  and  the  more  instructive  because  to  the  com- 
mon mind  unfamiliar. 

I 'take  up,  for  example,  the  collection  of  his  dis- 
courses, and  open  it  at  random  at  the  ninety-fourth  of 
those  described  as  ^^De  Diversis,"  or,  as  we  should  say. 
Miscellaneous  Discourses.  It  differs  in  no  important 
measure  from  others,  except  that  it  happens  to  be  on  an 
historical  subject,  which  is  by  him  characteristically 
treated.  The  story  of  Elijah  fleeing  from  Jezebel  is 
the  fundamental  theme.  The  modem  preacher  would 
undoubtedly  treat  this  in  its  evident  historical  sense ; 
exhibiting  the  circumstances,  with  the  sequence  of 
events,  and  showing  how  the  haughty,  undaunted,  and 
passionate  spirit  of  the  splendid  and  defiant  Ty^<^ 
queen  smote  the  soul  of  the  great  son  of  Oilead  as  no 
rage  of  the  king,  and  no  popular  fury,  had  had  power  to 
da  Bernard's  method  is  in  a  significant  contrast  with 
this.  It  represents,  in  an  instance  not  specially  re- 
markable, a  common  tone  in  his  preaching.  He  takes 
Elijah  as  representing  the  just  man,  who  suffers  per- 
secution because  of  his  righteousness.  Jezebel  repre- 
sents the  malice  of  the  world,  and  the  fierce  tyranny  of 
the  deviL  The  man,  rising  against  the  temptations  of 
sin,  flees  away,  wherever  the  will  of  Gh>d  may  carry 
him.     He  comes  to  Beersheba,  in  Juda, —  that  is,  to 


896  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIBYAUX: 

the  Holy  Church,  which  is  called  Beenheba,  or  the 
Seven  Wells,  on  account  of  the  grace  of  the  seven^fold 
Spirit,  which  in  it  is  ministered  to  the  faithf uL  Or, 
it  may  be  called  the  Well  of  satisfaction,  because  of  the 
depth  of  Divine  mysteries  in  it,  with  the  refreshing 
Scriptural  instruction  which  issues  from  it  in  ceaseless 
flow.  Of  this  instruction  it  is  that  the  Psalmist  says : 
^^  They  shall  be  satisfied  with  the  fatness  of  Thy  house : 
Thou  shalt  make  them  drink  of  the  river  of  Thy  pleas- 
ures. "  The  fullest  drinking  does  not  here  induce  the 
sense  of  satiety ;  it  only  excites  anew  the  thirst  of  those 
whose  desires  remain  unfilled.  The  flood  which  flows 
from  Scripture-reading  is  one  in  which  the  Iamb  may 
walk,  while  the  elephant  has  to  swim.  At  the  table  of 
the  Catholic  doctrine  feasts  are  provided  for  every  one, 
according  to  the  measure  of  his  understanding.  Here 
is  the  true  Paradise  of  delights ;  here  the  garden  of  all 
manner  of  fruits. 

Coming  thus  to  the  Church,  which  is  the  Beersheba, 
the  man  runs  also  to  Confession,  represented  by  Juda; 
and  there  he  leaves  his  servant,  by  whom  is  denoted 
his  former  foolish  and  vain  understanding,  with  the 
debilitating  sense  of  past  transgression ;  and  thence  he 
rushes  to  the  desert,  which  is  simply  a  just  contempt  of 
the  world.  There  he  rests ;  he  is  in  repose  from  earthly 
tumult;  he  sings  with  the  prophet,  ^^This  shall  be 
my  rest  forever ! "  He  throws  himself  down ;  that  is,  he 
holds  himself  vile,  and  renounces  all  his  former  desires. 
He  sleeps,  under  the  shade  of  the  juniper ;  because  in 
the  courts  of  the  Lord's  House  the  bodily  sense  is  meas- 
urably released  from  the  command  of  depraved  inclina- 
tions. There  the  angelic  vision  touches  him,  inspiring 
him  to  more  useful  activity,  and  prompting  him  to  rise 
to  higher  attainments.     He  looks  up  to  his  Head,  that 


A8  A  PBBACHBB.  S97 

is,  to  Christ,  the  Head  of  the  Church,  and  lo !  there  is 
the  bread  covered  with  ashes, —  that  is,  the  food  of  the 
Divine  doctrine,  outwardly  rude  in  appearance,  but  in- 
wardly unspeakably  nourishing  and  sweet ;  and  there  is 
the  constant  cruse  of  water,  which  is  the  fountain  of 
tears  gushing  forth  from  the  compunction  of  the  heart 
He  eats  of  that  bread,  and  drinks  of  that  fount, — that 
is,  he  accepts  and  obeys  what  he  hears,  and  he  goes  in 
the  courageous  strength  thence  derived  to  the  moun- 
tain of  Gk)d ;  that  is,  to  the  title  and  possession  of  the 
Divine  Blessedness.^ 

It  is  necessary  to  remember,  as  I  have  said,  that  this 
is  only  Hie  abstract  of  a  sermon  reported  by  the  monks, 
and  not  the  full  text  of  it  from  the  hand  of  Bernard ; 
but  his  characteristics  are  still  evident  in  it  Some  of 
the  expressions  must  have  been  his,  beyond  question,  as 
that  famous  one,  ^^In  hoc  pel  ago  agnus  ambulat,  et 
elephas  natat ; ''  and  his  familiar  method  of  preaching 
is  perhaps  not  unfairly  before  us.  Each  word  of  the 
Scripture  had  to  him,  you  notice,  a  mystic  meaning, 
the  thought  of  Gk)d  beneath  the  letter,  which  it  was  the 
joy  and  passion  of  his  life  to  explore  and  exhibit  Even 
the  proper  names  in  the  Bible  had  significant  charm  for 
him.  In  one  of  his  earliest  homilies  on  the  Annuncia- 
tion, he  begins  by  saying:  ^^Why  did  the  Evangelist 
wish  to  include  so  particularly  so  many  proper  names 
in  this  place  [Luke  1 :  26,  27]  ?  I  believe  it  was  be- 
cause he  was  unwilling  that  we  should  carelessly  hear 
what  he  was  so  careful  diligently  to  narrate.  He 
names  the  messenger  who  was  sent;  God,  who  sent 
him ;  the  Virgin,  to  whom  he  came ;  the  spouse  of  the 
Virgin;  the  very  region  and  city  of  both.  Why  is 
this  ?    Do  you  suppose  that  either  of  the  names  is  here 

1  Vol  prim.,  Ser.  zdv.  ooU.  8587-26S9. 


898  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIBTAUZ  : 

Buperfluonsly?  By  no  means.  For  if  not  a  leaf  falls 
from  the  tree  witiiout  reason,  nor  one  of  all  the  spar* 
rows  to  the  ground  without  our  Father,  shall  I  imagine 
a  superfluous  word  to  drop  from  the  lips  of  the  holy 
Evangelist,  especially  in  recording  the  sacred  history 
of  the  Word  of  Ood  ?  I  do  not  think  it  All  these 
names  are  full  of  supernal  mysteries,  each  one  overflow- 
ing with  celestial  sweetness,  if  they  may  only  have  an 
attentive  observer,  who  knows  how  to  suck  honey  out 
of  the  rock,  and  oil  from  the  flinty  rock."^ 

Of  course  to  a  mind  attempered  like  his  the  book 
known  to  us  as  the  Song  of  Solomon  had  incessant  at- 
traction, as  offering  almost  unbounded  opportunities  for 
mystical  exposition.  He  has  left  eighty-six  sermons 
upon  it,  in  which,  after  all,  he  only  enters  the  third 
chapter.  His  spirit  in  the  exposition  is  of  course  deli- 
cate and  discerning,  while  exuberantly  active  in  spir- 
itual suggestion.  ^^Love  is  everywhere  the  speaker,'' 
he  says :  ^^  and  if  one  desires  to  reach  true  understand- 
ing of  the  things  which  are  read  he  must  do  it  by  love. 
In  vain  will  one  come  to  the  hearing  or  reading  of  this 
Song  of  Love  who  does  not  himself  feel  the  passion; 
since  it  is  nowise  possible  for  a  frigid  heart  to  compre- 
hend this  glowing  discourse. "  *  With  free,  wide-ranging, 
untiring  treatment,  he  finds  in  the  Song,  or  we  may 
perhaps  think  imports  into  it,  all  hidden  secrets  of 
Christian  experience.  Each  chapter  stands  before  one, 
under  his  abundant  and  affectionate  discussion,  like  an 
immense,  far-spreading  vine,  climbing  over  trellis  and 
rock,  with  fragrant  odors,  and  all  changeful  beauty  of 
color  in  leaf  and  blossom,  laden  with  grapes  which 
grow  only  on  holy  ground,  and  from  which  is  pressed  the 

1  Vol.  prim.,  De  Land.  V.  M.  Horn.  i.  oolL  1066-M. 
'  YoL  prim.,  Ser.  Ixzix.  col.  216S. 


i 


AS  A  PBBACHKE.  899 

wine  of  ParadiBe.  He  allegorizes  always,  but  he  is  al* 
ways  in  lofty  earnest  The  kiss,  which  the  Bride  at  the 
outset  desires,  is  to  Bernard  that  miracle  of  the  Incar- 
nation in  which,  not  mouth  is  pressed  upon  mouth,  but 
Gk>d  Himself  becomes  intimately  united  to  human  na- 
ture.  The  three  spiritual  ointments  are  contrition, 
devotion,  and  reyerent  piety.  Hope  and  fear  in  the 
Christian  soul  show  the  impress  of  the  two  Divine  feet, 
of  judgment  and  of  mercy.  The  breasts  of  the  Bride* 
groom  —  one  of  them  is  the  long-suffering  with  which 
the  Lord  awaits  the  sinner,  the  other  the  tenderness 
with  which  He  receives  him.  So  with  all  the  free  ex- 
cursiveness  of  a  fancy  animated  by  profound  religious 
feeling,  the  accepted  spiritual  contents  of  the  book 
are  continually  set  fortii,  with  the  earnest  intent  to 
make  these  evident  and  dear  to  his  hearers. 

At  the  same  time  his  clear  and  decisive  ethical  sense 
is  never  obscured,  and  his  power  of  terse  expression  is 
always  at  command.  ^^  Learning  without  love  inflates 
one,"  he  says;  ^^Love  without  learning  is  liable  to 
error.  "^  ^^I  hear  gladly  the  words  of  a  teacher  who 
does  not  stir  applause  for  himself,  but  self-reproach  in 
me. "  '  ^  The  learned  pastor,  who  is  not  himself  a  good 
man,  it  is  to  be  feared  will  not  benefit  as  many  by  the 
richness  of  his  instruction  as  he  will  injare  by  the  ster- 
ility of  his  life."'  '^Security  is  pleasant  to  all,  but 
most  of  all  to  him  who  has  been  frightened.  The  light 
is  a  joyful  thing  for  all,  but  especially  to  him  who  has 
come  from  under  the  power  of  darkness.  To  have 
passed  from  death  unto  life  redoubles  the  delight  of  the 
life  which  is  reached.  **  *    ^'  As  to  merit,  it  is  sufficient 

1  Ser.  1zix.y  toI.  prim.,  ool.  8089. 

s  Ser.  Hz.  ool.  8021.  *  Ser.  IzzYi.  ooL  8148. 

«  Yd.  prim.,  Ser.  Izviii.  coL  8088. 


400  BEBNABD  OF  GLAmYAUX  : 

to  know  that  our  meritB  are  ne^er  sufficient.  Destitu- 
tion of  merit  is  surely  a  pernicious  poverty,  but  pre- 
sumption of  the  spirit  is  a  deceitful  riches. "  ^  ^  In  thingi 
of  a  spiritual  order  the  understanding  does  not  compre- 
hend, except  so  far  as  experience  feels  them. "  * 

It  is,  however,  the  general  height  and  expansiveness 
of  treatment  which  especially  commands  our  attention 
in  these  discourses.  You  will  have  observed,  I  am 
sure,  in  even  the  fragmentary  accounts  which  I  have 
given  of  his  writings  and  discourses,  how  large  a  place 
the  power  of  imagination  had  in  Bernard,  and  what 
reach  and  riches  came  through  it  into  his  speech.  One 
would  hardly  know  where  to  find  a  brighter  example  of 
the  power  which  is  imparted  to  the  preacher  by  this  al- 
ways noble,  if  sometimes  misleading  and  dangerous 
faculty.  It  is  perpetually  apparent  in  Bernard.  What- 
ever else  he  is  or  is  not,  he  is  never  commonplace.  His 
mind  is  fruitful  in  large  suggestions ;  and  the  text  is 
often  hardly  more  than  the  nest  from  which,  like  the 
eagle,  he  lifts  himself  on  eager  wing  to  touch  if  he  may 
the  stars  of  light.  One  of  these  sermons  on  the  Canti- 
cles, for  example,  treats  of  the  angelical  love  toward 
God,  according  to  the  differing  orders  of  angels;  an- 
other,  on  the  darkness  and  beauty  of  the  Bride,  dis- 
cusses the  question  why  it  is  that  hearing  is  of  more 
value  than  seeing,  in  matters  of  faith ;  another,  on  the 
ointments  of  the  Beloved,  exhibits  the  nature  of  four 
principal  virtues;  another  presents  the  excellency  of 
the  vision  of  God,  and  the  measure  in  which  the  sense 
of  the  Divine  presence  will  vary  in  good  men  according 
to  their  varying  aspirations ;  another  still,  impresses  the 
truth  that  while  knowledge  of  literature  may  be  profita- 
ble for  intellectual  culture,  the  knowledge  of  one's  own 

1  Vol  prim.,  Ser.  Izviii.  ooL  S086.  •  Sw.  zxiL  ooL  27Sft. 


i 


AS  A  PBEACH1BB.  4D1 

weakness  is  more  profitable  for  salvatioiL  There  is 
hardly  any  theme  of  practical  spiritual  religion  for 
which  he  does  not  find  suggestion,  toward  which  he 
does  not  take  incentiye,  in  the  parts  of  the  Song  which 
come  under  his  view. 

So,  equally,  in  his  miscellaneous  discourses,  he 
moves  to  the  consideration  of  all  sorts  of  subjects :  of 
the  creation,  according  to  wei^t,  number,  and  meas- 
ure ;  of  the  sevenfold  gifts  of  the  Spirit,  opposing  the 
seven  chief  human  vices ;  of  voluntary  poverty ;  of  the 
vice  of  ingratitude;  of  the  triple  guardianship  of  the 
hand,  the  tongue,  and  the  heart ;  of  the  proper  connec- 
tion of  virginity  and  humility;  of  those  who  suffer  loss 
because  on  them  the  mysteries  of  the  dying,  rising,  as- 
cending Christ,  are  not  impressed.  In  one  sermon  he 
treats  of  the  properties  of  the  teeth,  in  their  relation  to 
the  monastic  life ;  in  one,  of  unhealthy  or  insufficient 
blood,  as  representing  depravity  of  the  will,  which  is 
the  blood  of  the  soul.  But  whatever  his  subject,  how- 
ever familiar,  apparently  trivial,  there  is  always  a  light 
thrown  upon  it  by  his  imagination,  which  is  like  the 
light  of  golden  brown  or  royal  purple  which  rests  upon 
Italian  hills.  Cottage  and  villa,  the  rocky  cliff,  the 
squalid  town,  are  in  that  light  as  if  transfigured.  So 
fhe  commonest  theme  stands  to  Bernard  invested  with 
an  unworldly  radiance,  because  connected  with  infinite 
truths  and  immeasurable  destinies.  Whatever  his  im- 
mediate point  of  view,  he  sees  the  glory  of  Ood  before 
him,  in  creation  and  redemption,  and  the  majestic  mean- 
ing and  pathos  in  all  himian  life.  One  takes  the  impres- 
sion from  his  sermons,  which  is  now  and  then  made, 
but  not  very  often,  by  the  sermons  of  other  great  preach- 
ers of  the  world,  that  his  mind  was  so  full  of  interior 
lustre  that  it  made  little  difference  on  what  the  atten- 

26 


402  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIBVAUX  : 

tion  rested  at  the  moment.  A  mere  crevice  in  the  wall 
revealed  a  landscape.  His  spiritual  force  was  so  essen- 
tially electric  that  the  touch  of  a  text,  oftentimes  of  a 
word,  was  enough  to  start  responsive  currents. 

I  have  sometimes  thought,  even,  that  to  a  mind  so 
sensitive  as  his,  and  a  heart  so  aboimding  in  spiritual 
feeling,  the  yerjfarm  of  the  Scriptures,  as  he  had  re- 
ceived them,  must  have  brought  peculiar  stimulation. 
The  heavy,  glossy,  vellum  leaves,  the  ornamented  bor- 
ders, the  illuminated  initials,  the  inartistic  but  rich 
illustrations,  and  the  fact  that  each  letter  had  been 
lovingly  traced  by  monk  or  nun  now  risen  to  the 
heavens  —  certain  holy  thoughts  may  well  have  come 
to  him,  a  celestial  air  may  well  have  seemed  to  breaUie 
about  him,  as  he  opened  and  turned  the  costly  pages^ 
such  as  may  not  be  familiar  to  us  who  read  the  Scrip- 
tures as  thrown  out  mechanically,  thousands  in  a  day, 
from  long-primer  type,  by  commercial  presses,  on  com- 
mon rag-paper,  at  a  dollar  a  copy.  The  Bible  to  us,  in 
its  external  form,  is  only  a  book,  among  millions  of 
others.  To  him,  in  its  size,  its  elaborate  richness,  its 
historic  associations,  its  various  emblazonment,  its  costly 
covers  of  ivory  or  gold,  in  the  reverence  with  which  it 
was  guarded  in  the  monasteries  and  was  looked  upon 
by  the  people,  it  was  as  a  solemn  and  lordly  temple, 
vast,  sumptuous,  perfumed  with  incense,  along  whose 
pavements  and  under  whose  arches  walked  the  holy  of 
the  past,  and  into  which  streamed,  through  every  win- 
dow of  prophecy  or  of  gospel,  the  splendor  of  Ood. 

I  have  spoken  of  some  elements  of  power  in  the 
preaching  of  Bernard;  of  his  humility  concerning  it; 
of  his  intense  earnestness  in  it,  and  his  undoubting 
faith  in  the  doctrine  which  he  taught ;  of  the  Scriptural 
character  of  his  discourses,  and  of  the  mystical,  imagin- 


AS  A  PBBACHEB.  408 

ative  lights  which  always  lay  richly  upon  them.  It  is 
important  to  observe  also  the  tender  and  loyal  affec- 
tionateness  of  spirit  by  which  his  discourses  are  distin- 
guished, and  the  free  exhibition  of  personal  experience 
which  adds  to  their  charm,  and  which  gives  them  often 
a  strange  modemness  of  tone.  He  is  never  a  mere 
philosophical  lecturer,  any  more  than  a  rhetorical  de* 
claimer.  One  always  feels  him  to  be  a  sympathetic 
brother-man,  who  has  gone  through  the  deeps  in  which 
others  are  struggling,  and  has  climbed  the  hills  on  whose 
difficult  steeps  they  still  are  stumbling,  till  he  now  has 
sight,  from  the  delectable  mountains,  of  the  City  of 
Qod ;  and  who  is  ready  to  put  all  that  he  has  gained  at 
the  service  of  his  hearers.  There  is  not  the  slightest 
taint  of  a  mean  egotism  in  his  discourses,  yet  his  refer- 
ences to  himself  are  not  infrequent,  are  often  extremely 
tender  and  touching.  But  all  is  governed  by  a  para- 
mount purpose  to  reach  and  help  others,  setting  them 
forward  on  their  way,  or  guarding  them  against  appre- 
hended dangers ;  and  to  do  this,  if  need  be,  by  reveal- 
ing his  own  spiritual  feeling,  the  secrets  and  joys  of 
his  Christian  life.^ 

^  A  single  iUostratioEt,  one  of  a  multitade,  may  be  permitted.  It  is  in 
sentenoei  taken  from  one  of  the  eennons,  the  sixth,  on  the  Song  of  Solo- 
mon :  "  It  has  been  given  to  me,  miserable  man,  sometimes  to  sit  beside 
the  feet  of  the  Jjord  Jesus ;  and  now  this  foot,  now  that,  to  embrace  with 
oitire  devotion  as  far  as  His  benignity  deigned  to  permit  me.  And  if, 
when  foigetfol  of  mercy,  conscience  exciting  me,  I  too  long  clang  to  the 
foot  of  judgment,  soon  flung  into  incredible  fear  and  wretched  confusion, 
and  enveloped  in  gloomy  dread,  this  only  with  palpitating  heart  have  I  cried 
out  of  the  depths :  '  Who  knoweth  the  power  of  Thine  anger,  and  by  reason 
of  Thy  fear  who  may  measure  Thy  wrath  f '  But  if,  this  foot  of  judgment 
being  left,  it  has  happened  to  me  to  cleave  more  closely  to  that  of  mercy, 
I  have  on  the  other  hand  been  loosened  into  such  carelessness  and  n^U- 
gence  that  immediately  prayer  with  me  has  become  more  tepid,  action 
mora  sluggish,  laughter  readier,  discourse  more  indiscreet,  and  in  fact  the 
whole  condition  of  either  man  [outer  or  inner]  has  shown  itself  less  stead- 


404  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

The  hearer  or  the  reader  feels,  with  exalting  and 
gratefal  confidence,  that  this  man  will  help  him  if  he 
can;  and  that,  in  order  to  do  this,  he  is  willing  to  open 
for  others'  inspection  his  most  treasured  thonghts,  his 
most  reserved  and  sacred  feeling.  Whatever  he  has 
learned  bj  intent  meditation,  whatever  he  has  felt,  on 
any  level  between  agony  and  ecstasy,  he  freely  puts  at 
others'  disposaL  He  is  not  afraid  of  any  criticiflm. 
He  holds  no  experience  exclusively  his  own.  He  is 
supremely  conscious  of  immortality;  knowing  that  he 
is  not  to  tarry  here  long,  and  seeking,  with  a  love  like 
that  of  the  Master,  to  win  the  wanderii^,  to  lift  the  de- 
pressed, to  heal  the  wounded,  to  counsel  and  direct  the 
strong.  So  the  doctrine  which  he  taught  came  to  men 
illumined,  and  spiritually  emphasized,  by  their  clear 
perception  of  his  profound  experience  of  it  More  than 
by  any  melody  of  periods^  or  the  antiphonal  cadence 
of  responsive  clauses  which  characteristically  marks  his 
style,  it  was  commended  to  those  who  heard  it  by  tihe 
loving  eagerness  with  which  he  put  it  before  their 
minds. 

One  readily  understands  that  on  such  a  teacher,  so 
intense  yet  so  tender,  so  wide  in  range,  so  fruitful  in 
suggestion,  so  familiar  with  the  Scripture,  so  keenly 
alive  to  individual  needs,  so  certain  of  his  message  and 
of  its  Divine  value,  his  hearers  must  have  waited  with 
a  peculiar  receptiveness  of  spirit,  ardently  welcoming 
each  sentence  from  his  lips ;  that  he  was  to  them,  not 

fart.  Therefore,  instructed  by  the  mistresa  Experience,  not  judgmeat 
alone,  nor  onlj  mercy,  bat  mercy  and  jndgment  equally,  wiU  I  sing  unto 
Thee,  O  Lord  I  EtemaUy  will  I  not  forget  these  jortifications ;  they  aban 
both  equally  be  my  songs  in  this  place  of  my  pilgrimage,  antil,  merey 
being  exalted  above  judgment,  suffering  shall  cease,  and  alone  from  eveiy 
other  my  glory  shall  siog  to  Thee,  and  I  shall  not  be  ashamed."  —  Op6ii% 
vol.  prim.,  Ser.  vi.  in  Cant,  col.  2692. 


AS  A  PREACHER.  406 

what  others  sometimes  called  him  '^The  mellifluous 
Doctor, "  but  almost  as  a  messenger  sent  directly  from 
the  Lord;  that  they  gladly  yielded  all  things  else  to 
hear  and  see  him ;  that  for  him  they  would  cheerfully 
have  given  up  life,  if  so  his  ministry  might  have  been 
furthered.  I  find  no  preacher,  in  ancient  or  in  modern 
time,  in  whom  this  engaging  affectionateness  of  tone, 
this  readiness  to  present  the  rich  fruits  of  experience, 
have  been  more  marked  than. in  Bernard.  Therefore 
it  is,  in  part  at  least,  that  his  words  have  lived,  while 
the  louder  words  of  presumptuous  egotists  and  shout- 
ing declaimers,  of  whom  there  were  specimens  in  his 
day  as  in  ours,  have  been  long  swallowed  up  in  a  be- 
nign silence.  His  whole  philosophy  of  preaching  ap- 
pears summed  up  in  a  letter  of  advice  to  a  young  abbot : 
'^A  sterile  modesty  is  never  pleasing,  nor  is  a  humil- 
ity praiseworthy  which  surpasses  the  truth  of  things. 
Therefore  attend  to  your  duty.  Expel  bashfulness  by 
regard  to  that  duty ;  act  as  a  master.  Prepare  to  ac- 
count for  the  single  talent  credited  tx)  thee ;  be  easy  in 
mind  concerning  anything  beyond.  If  you  have  re- 
ceived much,  give  much.  If  little,  contribute  that 
For  he  who  is  not  faithful  in  the  little,  is  not  faithful 
in  the  much.  Remember,  too,  to  give  to  your  word  the 
voice  of  a  noble  virtue.  Do  you  say.  What  is  that  ?  It 
is  that  your  works  chime  with  your  words,  or  rather 
your  words  with  your  works,  so  that  you  take  care  to 
do  before  you  teach.  .  .  .  Indeed,  a  sermon,  living  and 
eflScacious,  is  any  example  of  good  work,  making  easily 
persuasive  what  is  said,  while  it  demonstrates  that 
that  can  be  done  which  is  recommended.  Therefore, 
on  these  two  commandments,  of  word  and  example,  un- 
derstand the  whole  quietness  of  your  conscience  in 
regard  to  your  duty  to  depend.     Yet,  if  you  are  wise, 


406  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX: 

jou  will  add  a  third,  a  zeal  for  prayer.  These  three 
abide :  the  word,  the  example,  prayer ;  but  the  greatest 
of  these  is  prayer.  For  though,  as  I  have  said,  work  is 
the  true  virtue  of  the  word,  yet  for  both  work  and  word 
prayer  gains  grace  and  efficacy." » 

It  is  of  course  to  be  remembered,  too,  that  he  who 
preached  in  this  high  fashion  to  monks  and  the  people, 
had  a  singular  beauty  and  charm  of  utterance,  was  fair 
and  saintly  in  face  and  person,  so  that  to  listen  to  him 
was  a  constant  delight  His  frail,  attenuated,  but 
graceful  figure,  ^^his  whole  body  most  delicate  and 
without  flesh,"  as  the  ancient  biographer  says,^  at  last 
worn  almost  to  transparency  by  vigils  and  fastings,  by 
sorrowful  solicitudes,  by  constant  prayer,  and  by  his 
care  of  all  the  churches,  —  they  seemed  hardly  to  asso- 
ciate him  with  the  earth,  while  the  inspiring  spirit 
within  used  with  only  more  fervid  energy  the  ethereal 
instrument  which  it  was  always  ready  to  leave.  His 
physical  presence  was  thus  alluring  to  the  reverence, 
and  quickening  to  the  love,  of  those  who  hung  with 
eagerness  on  his  lips.  The  pallid  and  commanding 
face,  full  of  human  affection  and  heavenly  hope,  with 
the  faint  tinge  of  the  early  bloom  still  lingering  on  the 
cheeks,  with  the  thin,  fair  hair,  with  the  eyes  which 
are  fondly  spoken  of  as  "  dove-like, "  yet  which  glowed 
at  times  as  if  lighted  with  divinest  fires,  the  modulated 
voice  which  quivered  like  a  harp-string  or  rang  like  a 
trumpet  in  his  changing  emotion,  the  extreme  vivacity 
and  energy  of  his  manner  in  public  discourse,  Qie  ra- 
diance of  the  spirit  which  seemed  well-nigh  to  trans- 
figure his  words, — all  these  so  impressed  and  affected 

1  Vol.  prim.,  epist.  ccL  ooU.  480-431. 

*  Corpus  omne  tennissimnm,  et  one  camibas  erat  —  Opeia,  Vita,  It 
vol.  MC.,  col.  2417. 


AS  A  PREACHER.  407 

his  hearers  that  a  something  nearly  magical  frequently 
appeared  in  the  power  of  his  speech.  He  spoke  as  one 
who  had  communion  with  Heaven.  Celestial  impulses 
were  felt  to  vibrate  on  his  uplifting  words. 

This  was  true  even  of  his  sermons  to  his  associates. 
But  of  those  impassioned  popular  addresses  which  live 
only  in  reports  of  their  effect^  it  must  have  been  more 
signally  true.  When  he  preached  tio  the  Germans, 
urging  them  to  the  second  Crusade,  though  he  spoke 
in  Latin  or  in  the  Romance  tongue,  neither  of  which 
could  they  readily  understand,  they  were  carried  before 
the  rush  of  his  eloquence  as  his  own  more  excitable 
countrymen  had  been.  They  wept,  they  exulted,  they 
bowed  themselves  in  confession,  they  devoted  them- 
selves to  the  Crusade,  before  his  words  had  been  inter- 
preted to  ihem.  An  observant  contemporary  said  of 
him  that,  ^'  reduced  almost  to  the  tenuity  of  the  spirit- 
ual body,  he  persuaded  the  eye  before  the  ear  heard 
him.  The  best  powers  of  nature,  he  adds,  had  been 
given  him  of  Qod;  the  highest  learning,  an  immense 
enei^ ;  his  pronunciation  was  open  and  clear,  his  phys- 
ical bearing  perfectly  suited  to  every  form  of  address. ''  ^ 
The  success  of  his  eloquence  in  the  German  cities  was 
so  astonishing  that  beside  the  indisputable  records  of  it 
the  stories  of  his  physical  miracles  seem  hardly  more 
than  commonplace. 

^  In  c^jns  gntuD  principatn,  meo  qnidem  jadicio,  ponitnr  rir  nootro- 
mm  temporom  Tulde  illnstris  Beniardas  Olaneyallensis  abbas.  .  .  . 
Siqnidam  yir  ille  bonus  longo  erami  squalors  et  jejaniis  ao  paUore  con- 
fectos,  et  in  qnamdam  spiritoalis  forms  tennitatem  redactas,  prins  per- 
snadet  visas  qnam  anditna.  Optima  ei  a  Deo  conoessa  est  natara,  eraditio 
snmmai  industria  inoomparabilis,  ezerdtiam  ingens,  pronuntiatio  aperta, 
gestns  corporis  ad  omnem  dicendi  modam  aoconunodatas.  Non  igitor 
minun  si  potent!  tantaram  remm  virtate  ezcitat  dormientea,  imo^  at 
plos  dicam,  mortaos.  —  JQpiK.  WibakU  Ah.  Stak^  oxIyii. 


408  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

He  was  as  ready  in  reply  as  he  was  rapid  in  rhetorical 
onset.  When  one  of  the  regular  clergy  insisted  on  being 
received  as  a  monk  at  ClairrauXy  tlutt  he  mi^t  attain 
the  beautiful  perfection  which  Bernard  had  portrayed 
and  had  zealously  recommended,  and  when  tiie  latter 
was  earnestly  urging  him  to  return  to  the  church  which 
he  wished  to  desert,  the  man,  becoming  furious,  ex- 
claimed, ^^  If  I  had  your  books  here,  I  would  tear  them 
up."  ^^  But,"  said  Bernard,  <^  I  do  not  think  you  have 
read  in  any  of  my  books  that  one  cannot  become  perfect 
in  his  own  cloister.  It  is  correction  of  manners,  not 
change  of  location,  that  I  have  commended."  The  apt- 
ness of  the  reply  so  stung  the  man  that  he  struck  Ber- 
nard a  heavy  blow  on  the  cheek ;  but  when  the  monks 
flew  at  him  to  avenge  it  the  abbot  bade  them,  in  the 
name  of  Christ,  not  to  touch  him,  except  to  lead  him 
gently  forth,  and  see  that  he  was  harmed  by  no  one.^ 
After  closing  a  discourse  at  Toulouse  against  the  Hen- 
ricians,  as  he  mounted  his  horse  to  depart,  one  of  his 
anti^onists  shouted :  ^'  The  pack-horse  of  that  master  of 
ours  who  seems  to  you  so  bad,  is  by  no  means  so  arching 
of  neck  and  so  fat  as  your  prancing  steed."  ^  I  do  not 
deny,  my  friend,  what  you  affirm,"  was  the  instant 
answer ;  ^^  but  you  must  remember  that  this  beast,  con- 
coming  which  you  insult  me,  is  a  brute  animal,  and  that 
if  he  eats  and  grows  fat  righteousness  is  not  wounded  nor 
God  offended,  for  the  beast  does  only  what  is  suitable  to 
him.  But  I  and  your  master  are  not  to  be  judged 
at  the  tribunal  of  God  by  the  necks  of  our  beasts,  but 
each  one  by  his  own.  Now  look  at  me,  and  see  if  mine 
is  more  gross  than  your  master's,  that  you  may  fitly  re- 
buke me ! "  So  he  flung  back  his  hood,  and  the  thin 
spiritual  face,  surmounting  a  throat    as  thin    as   it- 

i  YoL  aec.  Vita,  i  Ub.  liL  ooE  2207-06. 


AS  A  PBBACHEB.  409 

self,  flashed  forth  without  speaking  the  answer  to  the 
tannt.^ 

So  uniformly  intent  was  he  on  some  commanding  prac- 
tical end  that  he  seems  never  to  have  been  whirled  from 
his  central  self-poise  by  excitements  around  him,  or  in  the 
utmost  passion  of  his  speech.  At  the  great  assembly  at 
Ghartres,  in  the  interest  of  the  second  Crusade,  he  was 
vehemently  urged  to  become  its  leader.  Peter  the  Her- 
mit had  yielded  to  an  impulse  of  the  same  sort,  not 
more  energetic.  Bernard  instantaneously  refused,  and 
appealed  to  the  Pope  to  save  him  from  the  indiscreet 
pressure.  ^  Who  am  I,"  he  says,  ^^  that  I  should  deter- 
mine the  array  of  camps,  and  march  before  the  faces  of 
armed  men  ? "  ^  He  understood  perfectly,  as  he  wrote 
concerning  an  abbot  who  was  so  kindled  by  his  eloquence 
as  to  wish  to  lead  a  company  of  monks  to  the  Holy 
Land,  that  ^^  fighting  warriors  were  more  needed  there 
than  singing  and  bewailing  monks ; "  '  and  while  his  im- 
petuous speech  might  carry  everybody  else  beyond  the 
bounds  of  prudent  judgment,  he  remained  as  discreet 
and  undisturbed  as  if  in  tlie  cloister. 

Yet  all  the  time  his  strength  was  of  the  spirit,  not  of  the 
body.  The  treasure  was  in  the  frailest  of  earthly  vessels, 
that  the  excellency  of  the  power  might  be  seen  to  be  of 
God.  It  seems  really  to  have  been  only  his  incessant  activ- 

1  YoL  sec,  Yita,  L  lib.  yii.  cap.  17,  coU.  2348-49.  ^ 

Bernard's  personal  external  equipment  was  always  of  the  plainest  sort» 
and  he  was  reverenced  the  more  on  that  account.  Martfcne  writes,  long  after, 
of  his  chasuble :  "  Le  chasuble  de  Saint  Bernard  qu*on  montre  [at  Cam- 
hton]  n'en  inspire  pas  moins.  £lle  n'est  ni  de  dnp  d'or,  ni  d'argent,  ni  de 
aoje,  mais  de  simple  ooton.  EUe  sert  le  jour  de  sa  fSte,  et  k  toutes  les 
premieres  messes  des  religieux.'*  —  See.  Fay,  LiU.^  p.  108.  Paris  ed., 
1724. 

*  YoL  prim.,  epist  ccItL  coL  640. 

*  Epiat.  cocliz.  coL  66d. 


410  BERNARD  OP  CLAIRTAUX  : 

itj  which  kept  him  alive.  The  yehemeDt  zeal  wiih  which 
he  flung  himself  into  all  endeavors  for  what  to  him  was 
right  and  true  gave  whatever  of  vigor  it  had  to  the 
exhausted  and  failing  body.  It  was  true,  as  his  bi(^- 
rapher  said,  that  ^  as  often  as  any  great  necessity  called 
him  forth,  through  the  energy  of  his  mind  conquering 
all  things,  strength  was  not  wanting  to  his  body ;  and, 
while  all  who  saw  him  wondered,  he  surpassed  robust 
men  in  his  endurance."^  But  the  moment  the  crisis, 
whatever  it  wsb,  was  safely  passed,  it  seemed  as  if  he 
would  die  the  next  hour.  Yet  this  very  sense  of  being 
always  near  to  death  gava^a  transcendent  earnestness  to 
his  words;  while  the  impression  of  it  on  those  who 
heard  him  made  his  speech  seem  almost  like  that  of  one 
already  disembodied  ;  certainly  of  one  standing  in  the 
horizon  of  time,  fully  midway  between  earth  and  heaven. 
Passages  like  sunbursts  from  a  vivid,  serene,  unworldly 
soul,  already  holding  commerce  with  the  skies,  broke 
into  his  discourse,  and  gave  it  at  times  surpassing  e£Ful- 
gence  for  those  who  heard,  for  those  who  read. 

He  spoke,  too,  largely,  it  must  be  remembei-ed,  to 
those  whose  hearts  were  alive  toward  him  with  a  keen 
personal  affection.  No  love-letters  are  more  ardent 
than  are  some  of  those  written  to  him,  or  about  him,  by 
eminent  churchmen  of  his  time;  as  when  Peter  the 
Venerable  wrote :  "  How  much  of  reverence,  how  much 
of  love  toward  thee,  my  soul  holds  in  its  inmost  depths, 
He  knows  whom  in  thee  I  reverence  and  embrace."* 
Or,  again :  '^  If  it  were  permitted,  if  the  Divine  arrange* 
ment  did  not  oppose  it,  if  the  direction  of  one's  life  were 
in  his  own  power,  I  would  have  preferred,  my  best  be- 
loved, to  be  attached  to  your  felicity  by  an  indissoluble 

1  YoL  sec.  Vita,  i.  lib.  ▼.  col.  2262. 
*  Op«rm  Pet.  Yen.,  lib.  ii.  epitt.  zzix. 


AS  A  PREACHER.  411 

bond,  rather  than  to  be  a  prince  anywhere  among 
mortals,  or  to  rule  with  kingly  authority.  Why  should 
I  not  ?  Ought  not  a  dwelling  with  you  to  be  preferred 
by  me  to  all  earthly  crowns,  when  it  is  dear  not  to  men 
only,  but  to  angels  themselves  ? "  ^  And  that  the  love 
of  Bernard  for  others  was  not  less  ardent  than  theirs  for 
him  is  evident  enough  from  many  of  his  letters,  —  from 
one  to  Suger,  for  example,  the  noble  prime-minister  of 
France,  who  had  been  converted  to  new  obedience  to 
Christ  through  Bernard,  and  who  died  a  little  before 
him.  To  him,  just  before  his  deatli,  the  abbot  wrote : 
^  My  best  beloved,  I  most  e'agerly  desire  to  see  thee, 
that  on  me  may  come  the  benediction  of  the  dying. 
Perhaps  I  may  come ;  perhaps  not.  However  this  may  be, 
I  have  loved  thee  from  the  beginning,  I  shall  love  thee 
without  end.  I  may  confidently  say  that  I  shall  never,  in 
the  end,  lose  one  so  beloved.  For  me,  he  does  not  die, 
he  only  goes  before,  to  whose  soul  mine  adheres  in  a  tie 
never  to  be  relaxed,  in  a  bond  not  to  be  broken.  Only 
remember  me,  when  thou  shalt  have  come  thither,  going 
before  me ;  and  may  it  be  given  to  me  to  follow  thee 
quickly,  and  to  come  again  to  thee.  In  the  mean  time 
remember  that  never  will  the  sweet  remembrance  of  thee 
depart  from  me,  though  thy  presence  be  withdrawn  from 
grieving  hearts."  ' 

When  Malachy,  primate  of  Ireland,  and  legate  of 
the  Pope,  came  to  Clairvaux  a  second  time  to  see  Ber- 
nard, and  as  it  provedj  to  die  there,  he  said,  among  his 
last  words :  ^^  I  know  in  whom  I  have  believed,  and  I  am 
certain ;  I  shall  surely  not  be  robbed  of  the  rest  of  my 
desire,  since  already  I  have  had  such  a  part  of  it.  He 
who  has  led  me  in  His  mercy  to  the  place  which  I  have 

1  Opera  Pet  Yen.,  lib.  vi.  eptst  rdx. 

*  Open  8.  Bern.,  vol.  prim.,  epist  oclvri.  coL  549, 


412  BERNARD   OF  CLAIBVAUX: 

longingly  sought  will  not  deny  me  the  last  end  which  I 
have  equally  desired.  As  to  the  poor  body,  here  shall 
be  its  rest.  As  to  the  soul,  the  Lord  will  provide,  who 
saveth  them  that  hope  in  Him."  ^  All  the  affectionate 
and  fascinating  charm  which  Bernard  thus  had  for  those 
who  came  into  contact  with  him  was  exerted,  to  the 
utmost,  through  his  speech;  and  what  it  is  now  the 
fashion  to  call  '^  personal  magnetism  "  was  probably  as 
signally  apparent  in  him  as  in  any  preacher  who  has 
taught  among  men.  Joubert  has  said,  truly,  that  in 
great  authors  there  is  always  an  invisible  essence,  a 
nameless  something,  a  subtile  principle,  which  exhilar- 
ates more  than  all  the  rest.^  In  Bernard,  this  was 
the  temper  of  utter  courage,  springing  from  an  absolute 
and  unwavering  faith,  and  touched  as  with  celestial  fire 
by  a  tender  and  inexhaustible  love.  While  the  world 
continues,  that  element  in  human  discourse  will  never 
cease  to  fascinate  and  command. 

It  is  of  course  to  be  remembered,  too,  that  certainly 
after  his  middle  life  he  had  immense  power  in  popular 
address  by  reason  of  the  character  recognized  in  him, 
and  of  his  vast  fame  and  influence  in  Europe.  He  spoke 
from  a  throne  which  his  own  magnificent  action  had 
builded.  Men  knew  his  utter  and  invincible  daring,  in 
the  cause  of  the  poor  against  their  oppressors ;  in  the 
cause  of  endangered  purity  and  truth,  against  all  forms 
of  powerful  evil.  They  saw  how  simple  and  abstracted 
he  was  in  the  midst  of  his  most  brilliant  successes ;  how 
modest  and  gentle  at  the  height  of  his  renown.  The 
soul  which  addressed  them  was  the  same  which  had 

1  Opera  S.  Bern.,  vol.  prim..  Vita,  S.  Halacbia,  cap.  81,  coL  1520. 

'  n  y  a,  dans  la  lecture  des  grand  ^riTaina,  on  sac  inyisible  et  cach< ; 
e'est  je  ne  sals  quel  fluide  inassignable,  on  ael,  nn  prindpe  sabtil  plus 
nonnicier  que  tout  le  reste  —  Pena^^  87S. 


A8  A  PREAOHHai.  413 

flashed  into  terrible  speech  before  royal  wrong-doingy 
which  had  stricken  as  with  sabre-outs  the  pontifi- 
cal pride,  which  had  made  its  words,  in  great  emer- 
gencies, the  pivots  of  history.  He  had  accomplished 
what  nobody  else  could  have  hopefully  attempted ;  had 
subdued  schism,  stayed  the  march  of  devastating  armies, 
reconciled  enemies,  conquered  the  most  fierce  and  in- 
tractable spirits.  Roger  of  Sicily,  Peter  of  Pisa,  the  Anti- 
pope  Victor  Fourth,  had  had  to  give  way  before  his  irre- 
sistible appeals.  Men  came  to  confide  in  him  as  they 
did  in  the  sunshine;  to  be  as  sure  of  his  integrity 
and  impassioned  piety  as  of  the  blue  of  the  heavens ;  to 
expect  his  success,  as  when  the  lightning  leaps  from 
the  cloud  upon  minaret  or  cliff.  Enthusiasm  for  him 
became  a  general  passion.  Vast  processions  streamed 
out  from  all  towns  to  do  him  honor. 

At  Milan,  you  remember,  they  flocked  to  meet  him  at 
a  distance  of  miles  from  the  city  walls ;  noble  and  mean, 
the  prosperous  and  the  poor,  horsemen  and  footmen, 
receiving  him  with  a  passionate  reverence,  delighting  to 
look  upon  him,  counting  themselves  especially  fortunate 
if  from  afar  they  might  hear  his  voice.^  The  ornaments 
of  gold  and  silver  were  taken  from  the  churches  and  shut 
up  in  chests,  as  being  understood  to  be  displeasing  to  him. 
Men  and  women  clothed  themselves  in  mean  garments, 
because  he  disapproved  richness  of  dress.'     Crowds 

^  Vol.  sec.,  Vita,  L  lib.  iL  cap.  2,  9,  col.  2151. 

*  See  Laadalph,  quoted  by  Neander,  "Der  heilige  BernbaTd,"  a.  108, 
note  :  "  Ad  nutmn  qnidem  higua  abbatia  omnia  omamenta  eccleaiaatica, 
qiUB  auro  et  argento  palliisque  in  ecclesia  ipsiaa  ciyitatia  yidebantnr,  quasi 
ab  ipao  abbate  despecta  in  acrineis  reclusa  sunt/'  et  aeq. 

The  contemporaneous  account  of  bis  preference  for  a  dainty  simplicity 
in  dreas  is  delightfully  characteristic  :  "  In  vestibus  ei  paupertas  semper 
placuit,  sordes  nunquam.  Nimimm  animi  fore  indices  alebat,  aut  negli- 
gentis,  ant  inaniter  apud  se  gloriantis,  aut  gloriolara  affectaniSa  humanam.'* 
OptTOf  ToL  aec,  Vita^  ii.  cap.  zi?.  41,  coL  2434. 


414  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIBYIUZ  : 

thronged  around  him  to  kiss  his  feet.  They  sought  bits 
of  his  garments  to  be  treasured  as  relics.  The  whole 
population  was  vehemently  bent  on  making  him  their 
illustrious  archbishop,  from  which  he  only  escaped  by  a 
dexterous  stratagem  and  the  speed  of  his  horse.  His 
journey  homeward  to  the  convent  which  he  loved,  and 
which  he  wholly  refused  to  leave  for  any  place  of 
dignity  and  splendor,  was  like  a  royal  progress,  but 
attended  with  a  popular  devotion  which  no  monarch  of 
the  time  could  have  commanded.  Other  cities  welcomed 
him  as  Milan  had  done.  The  rustic  shepherds  of  the 
Alps,  as  he  slowly  traversed  the  rocky  slopes,  forsook 
their  flocks  and  hurried  in  crowds  to  seek  his  blessing.^ 
All  Europe  was  astir  with  the  fame  of  this  man, — a  fame 
only  exalted  and  extended  by  his  obstinate  humility, 
his  unconquerable  aversion  to  the  prizes  and  delights 
for  which  others  were  striving.  He  was  the  counsellor 
of  kings,  and  the  conscience  of  pontiffs,  while  the  com- 
panion of  the  humblest  of  monks^  because  himself  serv- 
ing only  the  Lord.  His  very  character  seemed  an 
evangel.  The  age  appeared,  as  it  really  was,  safer  and 
brighter  in  his  presence. 

His  audiences,  too,  were  impulsive  and  excitable,  com- 
posed largely  of  those  who  were  children  in  emotion 
with  the  vigor  of  men,  who  were  not  ashamed  to  give 
reins  to  their  feeling,  and  who  had  not  been  surfeited 
with  eloquent  speech.  They  attributed  to  him,  as  I  have 
said,  the  power  of  prophecy.    They  thought  that  miracles 

^  Jam  Alpes  tranacenderat,  et  descendebant  in  oocuraum  ejus  de  Bamfflis 
rupibns  pastores,  et  armentarii,  et  agreste  hominam  genus,  et  condama- 
bant  a  longe  benedictionem  petentes ;  et  reptabant  per  fauces  niontinm, 
regredientes  ad  caalas  saas,  colloquentes  ad  invicem  et  gaudentes,  quod 
Sancttim  Domini  vidissent,  et  manu  ejus  super  se  eztenaa  optatB  beoe- 
dictionis  gratiam  accepissent  — Opera,  yoI.  sec.,  Vita,  i  lib.  ii  cap.  5, 
coL  2164. 


AS  A  PBEACHBB.  415 

fell  freely  from  the  touch  of  his  fingers.  His  voice  was 
as  of  one  resplendent  in  holiness,  and  bringing  good 
tidings.  We  need  not  then  wonder  that  his  discourse, 
whether  or  not  thej  wholly  understood  it,  produced  upon 
them  unparalleled  effects.  Nothing  on  earth  seemed 
able  to  withstand  him.  He  preached  once  in  Paris,  in 
the  schools  of  philosophy,  where  men  were  too  busy  with 
engrossing  disputations  to  give  any  practical  heed  to  his 
words,  and  the  discourse  apparently  produced  no  effect. 
He  went  home  to  pray,  with  sobs  and  groans,  deep 
searchings  of  heart,  and  a  passion  of  tears.  He  was  in 
anguisli  of  spirit,  lest  God  had  forsaken  him.  The  next 
day  he  preached  again,  with  the  unction  and  energy  de- 
rived from  this  Divine  communion,  and  large  numbers 
were  converted,  and  gave  themselves  to  Qod  at  the  hand 
of  His  servant.^  He  preached  in  Germany,  calling  men 
to  repentance  as  the  condition  of  their  joining  the 
Crusade,  and  multitudes  who  had  lived  in  all  manner  of 
vice  were  transformed  as  by  miracle.  He  preached  at 
Toulouse,  to  those  whom  a  just  indignation  at  the  care- 
lessness and  viciousness  of  the  clergy  had  severed  from 
the  Church,  and  when  he  exhorted  those  who  would 
return  to  it  with  obedience  and  penance  to  hold  up  their 
hands,  the  air  was  filled  with  quivering  palms.  He 
preached  the  Crusade  at  Y^zelai,  where  nobles  and 
prelates,  the  king  and  his  queen,  the  haughty  and  beauti- 
ful Eleanor,  were  in  attendance,  and  no  one  took  any 
account  of  them.  All  eyes  and  thoughts  were  on  Ber- 
nard ;  and  as  the  winged  words  flew  from  his  lips  the 
passion  of  the  assembly  became  uncontrollable.  The  cry 
of  ^^ Crosses!  Crosses!"  swelled  to  a  roar.  The  vast 
numbers  provided  were  insufiicient  for  the  need.    Clothes 

^  Fiiiito  Tero  sennoue,  plorimi  ex  eiadem  clericis  per  manmn  iUias  sese 
Domino  reddideront.  —  Opera^  vol.  aec,  Vita,  L  lib.  yIL  cap.  13,  col.  2343. 


416  BBRNABD  OF  CLAIBVAUZ: 

had  to  be  torn  up  to  supply  them.  And  when  he  ap- 
peared on  the  same  errand  at  Basle,  Constance,  Frey- 
burg,  Cologne,  Frankfort,  Mayence,  it  was  the  same  scene 
constantly  repeated,  —  unnoticed  nobles,  forgotten  prel- 
ates, an  intense  and  irresistible  speaker,  thronging 
crowds  awed,  melted,  and  passionately  inspired.  The 
greater  part  of  the  able-bodied  men  along  his  track  took 
the  cross  as  the  banner  of  the  Crusade.^  In  one  of  the 
cities  his  life  was  almost  lost  in  the  crush  of  the  crowd.^ 
Perhaps  as  striking  an  instance  as  any  of  his  power  in 
preaching  is  that  presented  by  his  memorable  discourse 
before  Conrad  the  Emperor.  At  Frankfort  Bernard 
had  had  audience  with  the  Emperor,  but  ha^  failed  to 
impress  him  with  the  duty  or  the  privilege  of  taking 
part  in  the  Crusade.  Subsequently,  at  Spires  he  saw 
him  again,  but  again  witiliout  effect  The  cmly  answer 
to  be  obtained  from  him  was  that  he  would  consider 
the  matter,  consult  his  advisers,  and  give  his  reply  on 
the  following  day.  On  that  day  Bernard  officiated  at 
Mass,  the  Emperor  being  present.  Suddenly,  without 
invitation,  moved  as  he  felt  by  the  Divine  Spirit,  he 
began  to  preach.  At  the  end  of  the  discourse,  turning 
to  Conrad  in  the  crowded  cathedral,  and.  feeling  him- 
self as  much  alone  with  him  as  if  the  earth  had  swung 
out  of  sight  and  only  they  two  remained  to  remember  it^ 
he  addressed  him  not  as  an  Emperor  but  as  a  man. 

^  Siquidem  annantiaTi  et  locatas  anm,  mnltiplicati  sunt  super  nnnicniiB. 
Vocnantur  arbes  et  castella,  et  pene  jam  non  inreniunt  qnem  apprehen- 
dant  septem  malieres  iriram  uiiam,  adeo  abique  yidos  TiviB  remaoent 
▼iris.  —  OpercL,  vol.  prim.,  epist.  ccxMi.  coll.  520-521. 

3  De  tota  siquidem  regione  qaotquot  patiebantnr,  afferebaat  ad  earn,  et 
ta^tas  erat  coocarsos,  ut  predictus  rez  cam  aliquando  popnlnm  com- 
primeDtem  coercers  non  posset,  deposnta  chlamjde  Viram  sanctam  in  pro- 
prias  nlnas  snscipiens,  de  basilica  exportarit.  —  Opera,  ToL  sec.,  YitM,  i 
lib.  IT.  cap.  5,  ooL  2284. 


IS  A  PBEAOHSR.  417 

His  whole  aoul  flung  itself  forth  from  his  impassioned 
and  impetuous  lips,  and  he  was  for  the  time  as  one  in- 
spired. He  pictured  the  coming  tribunal  of  the  Judg- 
ment, with  the  man  then  before  him,  standing  there  in 
presence  of  the  Christ,  who  imperiously  says  to  him, 
^  0  man !  What  ought  I  to  have  done  for  thee,  which 
I  have  not  done  ?  "  He  set  forth  the  height  and  splendor 
of  royalty,  the  riches  of  the  Emperor,  the  wise  counsels 
he  could  command,  his  virile  strength  of  mind  and 
body,  for  all  which  things  he  must  give  account  The 
whole  scene  of  the  tremendous  coming  assize  seemed 
palpably  present  to  the  mind  of  the  preacher,  while  it 
flamed  as  a  vision  through  his  prophetic  admonitory 
words.  We  may  well  conceive  that  the  cathedral  itself 
appeared  to  darken  in  the  shadows,  and  to  tremble  with 
the  echoes  of  ethereal  thunders,  as  He  who  cometh  with 
clouds  was  foreshown.  At  last  the  Emperor,  bursting 
into  tears  in  the  midst  of  the  discourse,  exclaimed :  ^^  I 
acknowledge  the  gifts  of  the  Divine  favor ;  nor  will  1 
prove  ungrateful  for  them.  He  assisting  me,  I  am 
ready  to  serve  Him,  seeing  that  on  His  part  I  am  so 
admonished ! "  The  shout  of  the  people,  snatching  as 
it  were  the  word  from  his  lips,  broke  forth  in  exulting 
praise  to  Gk>d,  and  the  city  resounded  with  their  voices. 
The  Emperor  took  the  holy  banner  from  the  hand  of  the 
abbot ;  his  nephew,  with  a  multitude  of  nobles,  followed 
eagerly  his  example;  and  the  second  Crusade  was 
laimched  upon  its  turbulent  way.^ 

Only  one  more  instance  remains  to  be  noticed  of  that 
masterful  and  heroic  energy  in  Bernard  which  gave 
strange  power  to  his  words,  and  which  in  this  case  did 
not  need  even  words  to  represent  it  He  was  lying 
upon  his  sick  bed  at  Clairvaux,  in  the  last  year  of  his 

1  Open»  ToL  8ec.»  Yite,  i.  lib.  vi  oap.  4»  ooU.  2289-90. 

27 


1 


418  BEBNABD  OP  GLAIBTAUZ: 

life  on  eardiy  when  news  came  of  a  terrible  contest  rag* 
ing  at  Metz,  between  the  burghers  of  the  town  and  the 
neighboring  nobles.  The  archbishop  of  Trdves  could  do 
nothing  to  check  it,  and,  like  others  of  the  time,  in  such 
perilous  emergency  turned  to  Bernard.  Once  more, 
and  now  for  the  last  time  the  sovereign  and  invincible 
will  lifted  into  a  temporary  vigor  the  wasted  and  dis- 
solving frame,  and  the  abbot  went  forth,  in  uttermost 
feebleness,  to  the  banks  of  the  Moselle.  The  exasper- 
ated  nobles  would  not  even  hear  him,  but  broke  up 
their  camp,  and  went  elsewhere,  to  avoid  the  spell 
which  they  feared  his  speech  might  cast  upon  them. 
But  they  could  not  avoid,  and  could  not  resist^  the  im« 
pression  which  even  his  presence  made.  August  and 
saintly,  he  was  to  them  not  so  much  an  earthly  coun- 
sellor as  a  messenger  from  on  high ;  and  he  waited,  in 
absolute  confidence^  for  the  end.  One  of  his  visions  came 
at  night  to  encourage  him,  and  he  said  to  his  compan- 
ions, ^^Be  not  dismayed;  there  are  many  difficulties, 
but  the  desired  peace  is  near.  *'  In  fact  at  midnight  came 
a  message  of  penitence  and  reconciliation  from  the 
fierce  and  furious  men  of  war.  Their  own  souls  had  been 
too  much  for  them.  Terms  of  truce  were  proposed  and 
accepted,  and  after  a  few  days  a  firm  and  lasting  peace 
was  established.^  The  mere  silence  of  Bernard,  if 
only  he  were  present,  was  more  effective  than  others' 
discourse.  Before  he  spoke,  men  listened  to  him ;  and 
the  swing  of  his  extraordinary  power  carried  captive 
the  minds  of  those  whom  his  lips  had  not  addressed. 

I  am  reluctant  to  close  this  very  imperfect  sketch  of 
Bernard  in  his  relation  to  the  ministry  of  the  truth 
without  some  mention  of  his  Hymns ;  not  because  they 
are  of  supreme  value,  but  because  they  delightfully 

1  Opa%  yd.  aec,  Yita,  i  Ub.  t.  cap.  1»  S  4,  coll.  8251-J»8. 


▲8  A  PBEACHEB.  419 

illuBtrate  his  spirit^  and  because  in  translationB  they 
are  some  of  them  still  familiar  and  dear.  His  life  was 
too  busy,  practical)  and  public,  to  allow  him  liberty  to 
crystallize  in  forms  of  perfect  verse  his  devotional 
thought.  His  career  was  his  poem ;  which  he  wrought 
out  in  stanzas  of  great  labors,  great  successes,  modu- 
lated by  a  determining  spiritual  purpose ;  and  as  a  writer 
of  particular  hymns  he  hardly  ranks  with  the  great  mas- 
ters  of  Latin  song, — with  Prudentius  or  Fortunatus, 
with  James  de  Benedictis,  with  Thomas  of  Celano,  if 
he  was  the  author  of  the  ^^Dies  Iras,*'  with  Adam  of 
St  Victor,  or  with  Bernard  of  Glugni.  The  ^^Laus 
Patrisd  Coelestis,"  as  it  was  named  by  Archbishop 
Trench,  written  by  Bernard  of  Clugni  [or  Morlaix], 
and  known  to  us  in  part  as  ^^  Jerusalem  the  Gk)lden," 
has  no  doubt  a  certain  noble  charm  which  does  not 
equally  belpng  to  anything  written  by  his  greater  con- 
temporary, Bernard' of  Clairvaux.^  But  some  hymns  of 
the  latter  have  also  remained  possessions  of  the  Church, 
and  in  various  forms,  as  languages  change,  will  con- 
tinue to  be  sung,  we  may  be  sure,  until  the  Lord  comes. 
One  of  these,  to  Christ  hanging  on  the  cross,  seems  to 
me  to  have  a  singularly  stately  and  pathetic  music  in 
its  Latin  lines,  a  few  of  which  you  will  suffer  me  to 

^  It  will  \»  remembered,  of  ooarse,  that  this  is  bat  a  small  part  of  the 
poem,  of  about  three  thousand  lines,  "  De  Contempta  MandL"  The  poem 
is  lately  oocnpied  with  a  terrific  description  of  the  oormption  and  vice  of 
the  time,  and  of  the  coming  adrent  of  the  Lord  for  Judgment  The  Latin 
measoxe,  dactylic  hexameter,  and  also  the  theme,  are  well  represented  by 
the  opening  lines :  — 

"Hora  noTissina,  Ismpora  pessima  snnt,  rigilemiisf 
Booe  minadter  imminet  art>iter  ille  supremos; 
Imminet,  iomunet,  nt  mala  terminet,  aoqua  ooroneC, 
Becta  remoneret,  anzia  liberet,  ethera  donet.** 

It  was  probably  written  between  the  years  ▲•  d.  1140  end  114fb 


420  BERNARD  OF  GLAIBTAUZ  : 

reacL  They  form  ihe  last  stanza  of  the  hymn,  in  whicb 
the  thought  is  fixed  on  the  face  of  Christ:  — 

"  Dum  me  mori  est  neoease, 
Noli  znihi  touc  deesae ; 
In  tremenda  mortis  hors 
Yeni,  Jesn,  absque  mora, 

Tuers  me,  et  libera. 
Cum  me  jabes  emigrant 
Jesa  ehera,  tune  appan ; 
O  amator  amplectande, 
Tsmetipeom  tnnc  ostende^ 

In  crace  aslntifera."  ^ 

Translations  of  this  hymn,  made  bj  Gerhardt  in  Ger- 
man, bj  Mrs.  Charles  and  by  Dr.  James  Alexander 
in  English,  are  in  modem  hymn-books.  The  one  most 
commonly  used  begins, — 

**  0  sacred  Head,  now  wounded. 
With  grief  and  shame  weighed  down ;  ** 

and  as  often  as  we  sing  this,  as  we  often  do  at  the 
sacrament  of  the  Supper,  we  continue  indebted  to  Ber- 
nard. I  will  read  another  translation  than  the  common 
one  of  the  last  verse,  because  it  excellently  repeats 
both  thought  and  measure,  and  because  I  cannot  but 
think  that  the  lines  enclose,  as  in  transparent  amber,  a 
filial  reminiscence  of  the  death  of  his  mother:  — 

**  When  my  dying  hour  must  be, 
Be  not  absent  Thoa  froni  me ; 
In  that  dreadfhl  hour,  I  pray, 
Jesns,  oome  without  delay, 

See,  and  set  me  free  I 
When  Thou  biddest  me  depart, 
Whom  I  eleaye  to  with  my  hearty 

*  The  whole  *'  Rbythmica  Ontlo  ad  unimi  quodlibet  membrarum  Cbiisti 
parentis,"  in  seven  parts,  containing  nearly  870  lines,  is  found  in  the  Open 
Bern.,  toI.  sec,  ool.  1777-1788. 


AS  A  PBBACHBB.  421 

Lofer  of  mj  aoal  be  netr ;         '\ 
Witfa  Thj  MTiiig  erow  appsttv 
ShowThyadf  to  me  I  "^ 

Another  of  his  hymna  is  the  ^  Jesu,  dulcis  memoria^  **  * 
also  in  part  familiar  to  ns  through  a  delightful  transla- 
tion of  some  lines  of  it:  — 

"JmoB,  the  Teiy  thought  of  Thee 
Witii  iweetneae  fiUe  my  hraast, 
Bat  sweeter  fiur  Thy  ftoe  to  aee^ 
And  in  Thy  praeenoe  rest  t " 

Another,  still  known  by  us,  is  really  a  part  of  the  same 
hymn,*  only  translated  in  a  different  measure:-— 

'*0  Jeans!  King  most  wonderfiil, 
Thon  Gonqaeror  renowned  t 
Thon  sweetness  most  inei&ble, 
In  whom  all  joys  are  foond  1 

1  Another  truisktion  of  the  same  stansa,  by  J.  Addingtoa  8ymoiid% 
mtsf  ba  oompared  with  this  of  Mrs.  Charles :  — 

'*  When  the  word  goes  forth  lor  ^jing^ 
Listen  to  my  lonely  dying; 
In  death's  dreadful  hour  delay  not; 
Jesn,  oome,  be  swift  and  stay  not; 

Protect  me,  save,  and  set  me  free! 
When  by  Thee  my  sonl  is  bidden. 
Let  not  then  Thy  Isoe  be  hiddeni 
Lover,  whom  His  life  to  cherish, 
Shine,  ind  leave  me  not  to  perish  I 

Bend  fnnn  Thy  cross,  and  socoor  met" 

t  Thjg  «« Jubilns  Bhythmlcos,  de  Nomine  Jesn,"  containing  nearly  two 
hundred  lines,  is  fully  given  in  the  "Opera  Benaidi^"  voL  see.,  oolL 
1775*78. 

*  '' Jesn,  rez  admirabilis, 

Et  triumphator  noUI]% 
Dnlcedo  inefbhOis, 
Totins  deaidefmbilis. 
Mane  nobiscnm  Domine, 
fit  noe  illnstra  Inmine, 
Pnlsa  mentis  csligine, 
Mnndnm  replens  ^ini^inf  |  ** 


422  BBBNABD  OF  GLAIBYAUZ  : 

When  onoe  Thoa  enterert  the  h0ut^ 

Thea  trnth  begms  to  shine : 
Then  eerthly  Taoitiee  depart^ 

Then  kindles  Lore  Divine  1 " 

I  do  not  overestimate,  as  I  have  said^  these  or  oilier 
fa jmns  of  Bernard ;  but  they  show  his  profoundly  evan- 
gelical spirit,  how  the  meek  and  sovereign  majesty  of 
tiie  Lord  continually  attuned  and  governed  his  thoughts, 
and  how  the  same  hand  which  wrote  letters,  treatises, 
notes  of  sermons,  exhortations  to  pontiffs,  reproofs  of 
kings,  could  turn  itself  at  pleasure  to  the  praises  of 
Him  in  whose  grace  was  his  hope,  in  whose  love  was 
his  life.  If  these  hymns  had  not  remained  after  he  was 
gone,  we  should  have  missed,  I  think,  a  lovely  lustre 
on  his  work  and  his  fame. 

Taking  him  for  all  in  all,  he  stands  before  us,  I  am 
sure,  by  no  means  the  supreme  philosopher  of  his  time, 
or  its  most  untiring  acquisitive  scholar,  but  as  noble 
an  example  as  that  time  offers,  or  any  time,  of  the  power 
which  intensity  of  spiritual  force  imparts  to  speech ;  of 
the  power  of  that  speech,  as  thus  yitalized  and  glorified, 
to  control  and  exalt  the  souls  of  men.  I  think  of  him 
in  his  physical  frailty  and  his  tender  humility,  refusing 
office  and  spuming  all  enticements  of  station,  yet  con- 
fronting kings,  cardinals,  and  popes,  ruling  and  inspir- 
ing vast  assemblies,  raising  armies,  subduing  rebellious 
minds  and  wills,  sweeping  in  fact  the  nations  before 
him  with  his  impetuous  and  passionate  discourse,  over 
which  brooded  eternal  shadows,  through  which  streamed 
celestial  lights,  and  which  shot  to  its  purpose  from  a 
soul  full  charged  with  heroic  energy,  —  and  I  see,  and  I 
say,  that  the  noblest  opportunity  Ood  gives  to  men  is 
that  of  testifying,  with  lips  which  He  himself  has 
touched,  to  the  glory  of  His  character,  to  the  nuijestic 


AS  A  PREACHBB.  428 

grace  of  His  planSy  to  the  work  which  men  of  a  conae- 
crated  spirit  may  do  for  Him  in  the  world !  The  energy 
which  lies  in  the  spoken  word,  having  behind  it  splen- 
dor of  character  and  a  Divine  impulse,  is  like  fbe 
energy  from  which  the  Light  sprang !  It  opens  before 
dim  human  eyes  the  spheres  supernal,  which  no  tele- 
scope reaches.  It  sheds  fresh  glory  on  the  earth,  from 
His  divine  story  who  died  amid  the  mystery  of  dark- 
ness, but  whom  the  tomb  could  not  hold,  and  who  as- 
cended in  triumph  to  His  home,  still  blessing  as  He 
went !  It  brings  a  new  celestial  temper  to  the  welcom- 
ing spirit  It  becomes  a  beneficent  force  in  history; 
and  no  other  errand  on  earth  surpasses  his  who  through 
the  supreme  message  of  Gk)d,  uttered  from  the  lips  and 
reinforced  by  the  life,  is  able  to  send  the  human  spirit, 
trembling  but  triumphing,  conscious  of  sin,  but  exult- 
ing in  faith,  to  enter,  with  a  song  that  never  shall  cease^ 
the  Oates  of  Light  1 


v» 


f         "s.- 


•    i 


LECTURE  VIL 

BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUXi  IN  HIS  CONTROVERSY 

WITH  AB£LARD. 


am 


LBOTURB  VIL 

BKBNABD  09  CLAIBTAUZ:  IN  HIS  OONTBOYEBST  WITH 

AB&ABD. 

No  other  port  of  the  career  of  Bernard  has  elicited 
such  severity  of  criticism  as  has  that  which  concerns 
his  relations  with  Ab^lard.  It  is  not  unnatural  that 
this  should  have  been  so ;  and  the  fact  is,  I  am  sure, 
distinctly  honorable  to  human  nature.  For  Ab^lard 
was  one  of  the  most  brilliant  and  accomplished  of  the 
men  of  his  time,  untrammelled  in  thought,  aiBuent  in 
speech,  marked  bj  rare  mental  vivacity  and  vigor.  He 
represented  an  element  and  a  tendency  with  which 
Protestant  students  keenly  sympathize ;  the  element  of 
individuality  in  thinking ;  the  tendency  to  examine  in- 
dependently, for  one's  self,  whatever  doctrines  or  proofs 
of  doctrine  are  proposed  for  acceptance.  His  power  of 
personal  fascination  was  only  surpassed,  if  it  was  sur- 
passed, by  that  of  his  renowned  antagonist ;  while  the 
terribly  sad  and  tragic  elements  which  overshadowed 
and  fractured  his  career  have  made  an  appeal  of  con- 
stant power  to  the  sympathies  of  men.  The  letters 
which  passed  between  him  and  H^loise  have  been  said 
by  so  learned  and  cautious  an  historian  as  Mr.  Hallam, 
to  constitute  the  first  book  of  any  permanent  literary 
interest,  the  first  which  gives  distinct  pleasure  in  the 
reading,  produced  in  Europe  in  the  six  hundred  years 


428  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUZ  : 

after  Boethios'  ^'  Consolation  of  Philosophj ; "  ^  and  the 
stately  tomb  in  Pdre-Lachaise,  beneath  which  at  last 
repose  together  the  ashes  of  those  between  whom  passed 
those  memorable  letters,  is  one  of  the  first  to  be  sought 
by  travellers  from  all  parts  of  the  world. 

It  is  natural,  therefore,  and  wholly  reasonable,  tiiat 
Bernard  should  be  judged  with  judicial  strictness  in 
his  relation  to  this  man  of  versatile  genius,  of  large 
acquisitions  and  a  wide-reaching  influence,  and  of  a 
sad  fate.  It  would  not  be  unnatural  if  he  should  now 
and  then  have  been  judged  with  undue  haste,  and  in- 
temperate severity;  if  the  sentence  passed  on  him 
should  have  been  sometimes  too  sweeping  for  the  trutiL 
It  has  been  alleged  that  the  intolerable  temper  of  the 
later  Inquisition  appeared  in  his  bearing  toward  his 
brilliant  antagonist  It  has  been  intimated,  even,  that 
personal  rivalry,  an  unwillingness  to  have  his  own 
fame  eclipsed,  added  sinister  incitements  to  his  zeal. 
Even  those  who  in  general  justly  revere  the  Abbot  of 
Clairvaux  are  not  unaccustomed  to  speak  of  this  passage 
in  his  life  with  bated  breath,  as  being  probably  more 
open  to  question  than  any  other  in  regard  to  its  practi- 
cal spirit  and  tone;  as  the  proper  subject  rather  of 
apology  than  of  eulogy,  where  mitigation  of  judgment 
may  no  doubt  be  suggested,  but  where  is  hardly  room 
for  sufficient  defence.' 

1  Introd.  to  Lit.  of  Europe,  vol.  i.  p.  88,  note.     London  ed.,  1847. 

Remnaat  says  josUy  of  the  same  letters:  ^'Leslettres  d'Ab^laid  et 
d'H^loise  sont  nn  monument  nniqae  dans  la  litt^rature.  Elles  ont  aaffi  poor 
immortalieer  lean  noma."  —  Vie  d^AbUard,  tom.  i.  p.  161. 

*  The  early  disciples  of  Ab^lard  not  nnnatarally  raged  against  Bernard 
witii  fierce  sarcasm  and  inyectlTe.  Peter  Berengarins  wrote,  in  a  celebrated 
paper,  addressing  Bernard :  *'  Jamdndom  sanetitadinis  ton  odorem  ales  per 
orbem  £una  dispersit.  Sperabamus  in  linguss  tu»  arhitrio  coali  sitam  de- 
mentiam,  aeris  temperiem,  nbertatem  teme,  frnctanm  benedictionem* 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB^LABD.  429 

I  am  not  here  to  eulogize  Bernard,  or  to  defend  him; 
but  to  see  for  myself,  and  if  I  may  to  help  you  to  see, 
the  characteristic  facts  in  his  life,  the  spirit  which  they 
exhibit,  and  the  service  which  he  rendered  to  his  age 
and  to  mankind.  Neither  here  nor  at  any  other  point 
in  our  review  have  I  had  any  thesis  to  maintain,  any  par- 
tiality to  indulge,  or  any  prejudice  to  gratify.  All  that 
I  wish  is  that  we  may  have  the  facts  so  set  before  us, 
without  concealment  and  without  color,  that  we  may 
found  upon  them  an  intelligent  judgment  of  mo  /ements 
and  of  men  whose  direct  influence  long  ago  ceased  to  be 
felt  I  want,  for  myself,  to  know  Bernard,  to  the  cen* 
tre  of  his  life,  and  to  aid  you  in  like  maimer  to  know 
him;  and  in  order  to  do  this  it  is  necessary  to  see 
whether  he  bore  himself  with  a  sincere  and  unfaltering 
manhood  in  what  was  to  him  a  critical  time. 

To  have  the  facts  plainly  in  sight  it  is  necessary,  of 
course,  to  gain  a  distinct  and  just  impression  of  what 

Gftpat  taum  nabes  tangebat.  .  .  .  Nunc,  proh  dolor !  patnit  quod  latebat, 
et  colabri  soporati  tandem  acnleoe  suadtasti.  Omiasis  omnibiu,  Petram 
Abttlaidum  qnad  signum  ad  sagittam  posuisti,  in  qaem  aoerbitatis  tos 
▼inueyomerea,  quern  de  terra  viventinm  toUerea,  quern  inter  mortnoe  col- 
looarea,'*  $i  seq,  — Ber.  ApoL,  Opera  Abttl.,  torn.  ii.  p.  772. 

lUmosat  says  of  Bernard : "  A  voir  tant  d'efforta  empreinta  de  tant 
de  baine,  de  reaaentiment  et  d'oigueil,  on  ae  dit  qu'il  eat  benreuz  poor 
aaint  Bernard  d'avoir  iii  un  Saint  .  .  .  Saint  Bernard  conaacrait  k  Diea 
aea  paaaiona,  comme  aatrefoia  lea  templiera  leor  ^p^e."  —  Fie  oPAbilard, 
torn.  i.  228. 

Even  Milman  apeaka  of  Bernard,  "  in  tbe  beat  and  and  pride  of  bia 
trinmpb"  [at  Sena],  aa  proToking  bia  mate  adveraary  witb  taunta,  and 
proceeding  "in  no  meaaured  language  to  paraue  bia  victory."  —  Latin 
Christ.,  vol.  iv.  p.  216. 

Neander,  alwaya  diaceming  and  catbolic,  aeea  the  aecret  of  Bemard'a 
ear^  and  late  antagoniam  to  Ab^lard  in  tbe  eaaentiaUy  oppoeito  tendency 
of  bia  mind  aud  spirit':  "  Aber  er  staud  in  seiner  Qeistearicbtung  dem  Aba- 
lard  su  fern,  um  auf  ihn  einwirken,  aich  mit  ibm  veratandigen  zu  konnen." 
—  i>ar  AatZ.  Bern,,  a.  251. 


480  BEBNABD  OF  GLAntYAUZ  : 

AMlard  was  in  mind  and  character,  of  the  work  at- 
tempted by  him,  and  of  the  movement  of  theological  or 
philosophical  forces  to  which  he  gave  direction  and  mo* 
mentum.  This  is  the  more  needful  because,  while  his 
name  is  often  recalled,  his  personality  is  not  always 
understood,  and  his  attitude  toward  the  thought  of  his 
age  is  not  carefully  distinguished.  It  is  perfectly  true, 
as  his  latest  biographer,  Charles  de  B^musat,  has  said  in 
introducing  his  fascinating  volumes,  that  ^'  Ab^lard  is  a 
man  rather  celebrated  than  known,  whose  fame  appears 
romantic  more  than  historical,  and  whose  name  has  re- 
mained in  the  popular  mind  chiefly  through  the  remem- 
brance of  his  amours."^  Let  us  try,  then,  better  to 
understand  him,  to  estimate  correctly  his  powers  and 
labors,  and  to  see  how  Bernard  came  to  stand  toward 
him  in  that  sharp  antagonism  before  which  the  brilliant 
and  versatile  disputant  was,  at  the  end,  hopelessly 
beaten. 

Pierre,  the  eldest  child  of  Berengarius,  a  nobleman  of 
Brittany,  and  of  Lucia  his  wife,  was  bom  in  his  father's 
castle,  the  site  of  which  is  still  marked  by  some  re- 
maining ancient  foundations  and  by  a  stone  cross,  on  a 
hill  overlooking  the  village  of  Palais,  not  far  from 
Nantes,  in  the  year  a.  d.  1079,  or  twelve  years  before 
Bernard  was  bom  at  Fontaines.  The  surname  Ab^lard, 
by  which  he  has  been  known  in  history,  is  said  by 
some  to  have  been  given  to  him  in  a  scurvy  jest,  by  a 
hostile  teacher  in  Paris ;  but  it  is  more  commonly  un- 
derstood to  have  become  his  popular  name  through  a 

^  Ab^rd  est  moins  oonna  qn'U  n'est  cfl^bre,  et  aa  renomtn^  semble 
rotnanesqae  platdt  qaliiatoriqae.  On  sait  TBgnement  qu*il  fat  mi  pro- 
fesseur,  an  philosophe,  an  thiologien;  .  .  .  et  le  Talg»ire  m6me  i«conte 
la  fatale  histoire  de  see  amoon.  C'est  par  ce  sonyenir  qne  le  nom  d'Abdlard 
est  rest^  popolaire.  -^AbHard,  par  Charles  de  JUMueat^  torn.  L  p.  1. 
•d.,  1846. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB^LABD.  481 

general  application  to  him  of  the  French  word  for  Bee, 
^  Abeille, "  on  account  of  his  industry,  and  the  sweet- 
ness of  his  discourse.^  Bernard  found  poison,  rather 
than  honey,  in  parts  of  his  discourse,  but  he  refers 
to  him  in  one  of  his  letters,  as  a  buzzing  or  a  hissing 
bee.* 

His  father  was  a  man  of  good  repute  as  well  as  of 
rank,  a  skilful  and  successful  soldier,  yet  with  a  sense 
of  the  value  of  knowledge,  with  the  pre-eminence  of 
mental  accomplishments,  which  can  hardly  have  been 
general  among  men  of  his  class.  He  destined  his  son« 
almost  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  the  career  of  a  soldier, 
but  wished  him  first  to  receive  larger  instruction  than 
was  then  customary,  in  the  letters  and  the  science  of 
the  age.  The  bright,  eager,  aspiring  boy  entered  with 
ardor  upon  the  course  thus  opened  before  him,  and  be- 
came soon  so  enamoured  of  his  studies  as  to  be  unwilling 
to  give  them  up  for  the  discipline  and  practice  of  arms. 
He  cheerfully  relinquished  to  his  younger  brothers  his 
right  of  primogeniture,  abandoning  his  feudal  inheri- 
tance, and  going  forth  into  the  world,  as  some  one  has 
said^  ^  a  knight-errant  of  Philosophy ;  *^  roaming  freely 

1  R^mnaat  doabts  this,  howeyer.  "D'Ai^ntri  Yoit  nn  nom  de  famille 
dans  le  nom  de  Pierre  Esreillard,  qa'ils  appellent  en  France  Ab^iUrd. 
Lea  tezteB  latins  ^rita  en  Bretague  portent  Abelardua.  C'^tait  plntdt  an 
siunom.  .  .  .  Dana  sea  proprea  ouTragea,  il  se  nomme  lui-mdme :  *  Hoc 
▼ocabolnm  Abnlardua  miH  .  •  .  ooUocatnm  eat'  Othon  de  Frisingen 
foit  Abailardna,  et  Ton  tronye  anad  Abaielardaa,  et  mdrae  Abanlaidna, 
Abbajalarina,  Baalanrdna.  En  franfaia,  Abeillard,  Abayelard,  Abalard* 
Abanlaid,  et  aL  Lea  formea  lea  plus  naitiea  aont  Abailud  on  Ab^laid. 
La  demi^re  eat  celle  qne  prel%rent  Bayle  et  M.  Condn.'* —  FU  tTAUlard, 
torn.  i.  p.  14,  note. 

'  Pro  meUe,  yel  potiaa  in  nielle  yenennm  paaeim  omnibna  propinatnr. 
•  •  .  Siqnidem  aibilaylt  apis  qnsB  erat  in  Francia»  api  de  Italia ;  et  yeu- 
cn^it  in  nnnm  ad^ersua  Dominam.  —  Opera,  vol.  pTim.»  epiit.  cWiriy 
eoL  412. 


482  BERNARD  OP  CLAIRTA17Z: 

from  school  to  school,  and  from  province  to  provincci 
wherever  he  saw  chance  to  add  to  his  knowledge,  or  to 
exercise  his  active  and  emulous  powers.  It  was  a  real 
enthusiasm  with  him ;  and  he  gladlj  resigned  camp  and 
tournament  for  what  were  to  him  the  more  exciting  and 
more  rewarding  scholastic  contests. 

Michelet  has  trulj  said  of  Brittany  that  its  people 
are  always  at  heart  republican,  in  the  social  if  not  the 
political  sense  ;^  and  he  also  says,  probably  less  cor- 
rectly, that  Pelagius  was  a  Breton,  who  'infused  the 
stoical  spirit  into  Christianity,  and  was  the  first  in  the 
Church  to  lift  his  voice  on  behalf  of  human  liberty. " ' 
Pelagius  was  more  probably  a  Welshman,  though  his 
name  ^  the  Sea-bom  *'  would  have  been  as  appropriate 
to  a  native  of  Brittany.  But  Michelet  is  certainly  right 
in  claiming  for  the  same  province,  hard  and  rough,  but 
prolific  in  genius  and  in  mental  independence,  Ben^ 
Descartes,  bom  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  who 
sought  to  reconstruct  human  knowledge ;  who  gave  the 
impulse  to  that  immense  intellectaal  movement  after- 
ward represented  in  different  directions  by  Spinoza, 
Leibnitz,  by  Eant^  and  by  Hegel;  whose  fame  was  a 
glory  of  the  seventeenth  age ;  and  of  whom  it  was  said 
at  his  death  that  everybody  in  northern  Europe  who 
thought  at  all  thought  according  to  the  method  of  Des- 
cartes. Midway  between  Peli^ius  and  Descartes,  in 
the  twelfth  century,  stands  Ab^lard;  and  points  of 
resemblance  are  certainly  not  wanting  between  him  and 


1  Un  mot  profond  yient  d'toe  dit  snr  la  Yend^  et  il  a'apfiliqiie 
k  la  Bretagne  :  Get  popuicUiom  aont  aufond  r/pubaeainei  ;  ripabUcanume 
social,  non  potitiqne.  — Bid,  de  i^Vtmee,  torn.  iL  p.  90.    PariB  ed.,  18S5. 

*  Le  breton  Pelage,  qui  mit  Teflprit  stoicien  dana  le  chiistianume,  et 
rklama  le  premier  dans  T^glise  en  fareur  de  la  liberty  bomaine.  —  HiM, 
d§  JPWiNfle,  tom.  it  p.  9. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB£LABD.  488 

fho86  with  whom  the  eloquent  French  historian  has 
been  moyed  to  associate  his  name.  The  self^asserting 
and  vehement  spirit  was  present  in  either,  the  mental 
intrepidity,  the  readiness  for  debate,  the  strong  ten- 
dency toward  something  new  in  the  realms  of  specula* 
tion,  the  daring  reliance  on  personal  conviction  as 
against  any  alleged  authority  in  the  school  or  the 
Church.  Ab^lard  had  not  perhaps  all  the  power  of 
the  others,  and  has  not  left  so  large  a  trace  on  hu- 
man thought;  but  he  was  of  their  temper,  and  his 
genius  had  at  least  an  equal  enterprise  and  a  similar 
sparkle. 

In  his  glad  and  free  youth,  handsome,  confident^ 
rapid  in  thought  and  brilliant  in  speech,  accomplished 
and  engaging  in  manners  and  address,  a  poet  and  singer 
as  well  as  an  ardent  student  of  philosophy, —  one  of  the 
first  to  put  the  vernacular  French  of  the  century  to  the 
service  of  poetic  thought  in  melodious  forms, —  he  at- 
tracted attention  and  inspired  admiration  wherever  he 
went,  and  felt  himself,  as  others  felt  for  him,  that  he 
was  entering  on  a  splendid  career.  It  is  a  fact  full  of 
significance  that  the  immense  excitements  in  France, 
and  in  his  own  province,  attendant  on  the  preaching  of 
Peter  the  Hermit  and  the  following  Crusade,  left  appar- 
ently no  traces  upon  him,  though  during  that  extraor- 
dinary crisis  in  the  moral  and  martial  life  of  Europe 
he  was  already  in  the  glow  of  courageous  and  sensitive 
youth.  The  only  explanation  must  be  found  in  his  in- 
tense absorption  in  study.  His  excitable  imagination 
would  surely  have  been  kindled  by  the  great  aims  pro- 
posed, and  by  the  all -involving  enthusiasm,  if  it  had 
not  been  supremely  pre-occupied  by  the  charms  of  phi- 
losophy, which  was  to  him  a  dearer  Jerusalem,  and  by 
the  contests  of  the.schools,  which  appeared  to  him  more 

28 


484  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUZ  : 

significant  and  momentous  than  the  morement  of  amiiea 
over  the  Continent  ^ 

In  the  course  of  his  wandering,  while  still  in  eariiest 
youth,  he  seems  to  have  been  attracted  by  Jean  Roscel* 
linus,  also  like  himself  a  native  of  Brittany,  and  for  a 
time  canon  at  Compidgne,  who  was  then  teaching  at 
Tours  or  near  Vannes  in  his  native  province,  and  who 
was  at  that  time  the  most  forcible  and  prominent  cham- 
pion in  Europe  of  what  has  since  been  known  as  Nomi- 
nalism in  the  history  of  philosophy.^  Of  this  doctrine 
I  shall  speak  briefly  hereafter.  Roscellinus  carried  it 
so  far  as  to  excite  the  opposition  of  Anselm  and  others, 
and  to  come  into  apparent  collision  with  the  Church 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  to  which  he  seemed  to  give  a 
tri-theistic  exposition.  His  doctrine  was  condemned 
by  a  council  at  Soissons,  in  a.  d.  1092,  and  he  was 
constrained  formally  to  renounce  it,  though  he  after- 
ward appeared  again  as  its  advocate.  The  youth  of 
Ab^lard  must  have  been  precocious  to  permit  his  taking 
any  strong  impression  at  that  time  from  any  teacher, 
on  questions  so  speculative.  But  he  very  likely  felt 
the  grasp  of  a  mind  more  largely  trained  than  his  own, 
and  accepted  from  the  master  something  ot  his  spirit^ 

^  Bgo  Tero  qaanto  unplius  et  facUiiu  in  studio  litteranun  profeci, 
tanto  ardentins  in  eis  inhaasi,  et  in  tanto  eanun  amore  iUectoa  anm,  at 
mUitaris  gioiie  pompam  cam  hereditate  et  pnerogativa  primogeni- 
toram  meomin  fratriboa  derelinqnens,  Sfaitia  carie  penitns  abdicaiem 
at  Minerw  gremio  edaoarar.  .  .  .  Protnde  direraaa  diapatando  per- 
ambolana  proTinciaSy  abicanqae  higna  artia  vigan  atadium  aadieram, 
peripatetioorum  emulator  faetus  aum.  —  Opera,  epiat.  i.,  Hirt.  Calam., 
torn.  L  p.  4. 

'  n  enaeignait  de  plus  que  lea  idto  gin^ialea  n'^taient  que  dea  moti : 
"  L'homme  veitaeuz  est  une  rialit^  la  ▼eitu  n'est  qu'on  aon."  Cetta 
itfonne  bardie  ^bnmlait  toute  poMe»  toute  religion :  elle  babituait  k  ne 
Toir  qae  dea  perMunifications  dana  lea  ideea  qa'on  arait  rkliaeia.— 
Hiobxijet:  Hid.  de  I^rtmet,  torn.  iL  p.  279. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOVEBST  WITH  AB^LABD.  486 

if  not  much  of  his  thought.     It  is  not  improbable  that 
he  studied  with  him  again  at  a  later  time.  ^ 

At  the  age  of  twenty,  or  thereabout,  he  went  to  Paris, 
the  centre  then,  as  for  centuries  afterward,  of  letters 
and  arts  for  northern  Europe.  It  was  small  in  ext^it, 
as  compared  with  that  magnificent  city  of  thirty  square 
miles  which  now  for  generations  has  dazzled  and  be- 
witched the  world.  As  tried  by  the  same  standard,  it 
was  humble  in  appearance,  poor,  even  squalid.  Un- 
paved,  and  by  night  unlighted,  the  old  name  Lutetia, 
or  Mud-town,  was  still  not  inappropriate  to  it  The 
island  in  the  Seine,  La  Cit^,  which  is  still  the  heart  of 
Paris,  was  then  the  special  seat  of  royal  residence,  of 
the  Church,  of  public  Justice,  and  of  Instruction.  The 
palace  was  there,  the  Royal  Gardens,  the  metropolitan 
church  which  preceded  the  magnificent  Notre-Dame  of 
a  century  later  that  remains  to  our  time,  fifteen  other 
churches,  the  vestiges  of  which  are  now  lost,  but  which 
then  stood  around  this,  as  R^musat  says,  ^^  like  guards 
of  honor  around  their  queen ; "  ^  and  in  the  shadows  of 
these  churches  and  their  cloisters,  along  the  earthen  or 
grassy  ways,  passed  and  repassed  the  throngs  of  stu* 
dents  gathered  from  all  parts  of  Europe  by  the  fame  of 

1  It  has  been  doabted,  appeiently  with  good  reeaon,  whether  Ab^krd 
eonld  hare  been  a  pnpil  of  Boscellinna.  He  says  nothing  of  it  in  the 
"  Historia  Calamitatum,**  and  his  extreme  yonth  at  the  time  when  Bos- 
oellinns  was  oompeUed  to  cease  teaching  has  seemed  to  contradict  it.  Bnt 
Othon  de  Freisingen,  a  contemporary  and  teacher  of  Ab^Iard,  asserts  it 
(De  Qest  Frid.,  i.  42) ;  and  Ab^lard  himself,  in  the  <<  Dialectica,"  pars 
qninta,  speaks  of  *'  Magistri  nostri  Roscellini : "  (Oarrages  In^dits,  p. 
471.  Paris  ed.,  1886.)  Coosin  properly  accepts  this  as  oonclnsiTe,  though 
he  thinks  that  Ab41ard's  attendance  may  have  been  on  private  lessons, 
alter  the  return  of  Roscellinns  from  England,  and  jnst  before  Ab41ard's 
going  to  Paris. — Introd,  Ouv.  In4d,,  pp.  xl-zliii. 

*  EnTironnant  la  m^tropole  comme  des  gardes  rangte  autonr  de  leor 
xeiiM.  —  Vie  tPAbilard,  torn.  i.  p.  48. 


486  BERNARD  OF  GLAIBTAUX: 

Parisian  schools.  Two  bridges  connected  the  island 
with  ihe  opposite  banks  of  the  river,  along  which  ab« 
beys,  monasteries,  and  churches  had  already  begun  to 
arise.  On  the  left  bank,  where  the  students  were  prin- 
cipally lodged,  the  name  ^^The  Latin  quarter"  still 
remains  a  memorial  of  them.  On  the  right  bank  wer«) 
the  commercial  establishments,  which  already  were  as* 
suming  importance.  Till  a  hundred  years  later  the 
place  of  the  Louvre  was  occupied  by  a  royal  hunting- 
seat,  which  Philip  Augustus  then  changed  to  a  feudal 
fortress,  and  which  Francis  First  converted  afterward 
into  a  palace.  The  site  of  the  Tuileries,  centuries 
later,  remained  a  tile-yard.  The  Place  de  la  Concorde, 
the  Champs  Elys^es,  were  swampy  grounds  or  a  lonely 
hill.  Bttt^  as  compared  with  other  cities  of  the  king- 
dom, Paris  was  even  then  attractive  and  rich;  and 
there  were,  especially,  the  schools  of  philosophy  which 
Ab^lard  sought,  and  through  which  he  hoped  to  gain 
learning  and  fame. 

Of  these,  the  school  of  Notre-Dame  was  the  most 
celebrated,  with  William  of  Champeaux  for  its  master, 
and  to  it  students  were  attracted  from  all  parts  of  the 
Continent  To  it  the  steps  of  Ab^lard  were  naturally 
turned,  and  he  entered  it,  no  doubt,  with  high  antici- 
pations which  were  not  destined  fully  to  be  realized. 
The  master,  William,  while  distinguished  as  a  teacher 
of  dialectics,  was  at  the  same  time  archdeacon  of  Paris. 
He  was  known  as  the  ^^ Column  of  the  Teachers,"  and 
was  among  the  first  to  introduce  the  method  and  the 
spirit  of  the  scholastic  philosophy  into  what  subse- 
quently became  the  University  of- Paris, ^  though  the 

^  Archidiacre  de  Paris,  il  enseignait  avec  beauconp  de  saoete  et  d'idit. 
II  paralt  avoir  brills  dans  la  dialectitiue,  donn^  de  qoelqaes-nnes  dee  ques-^ 
tiona  qii*elle  poae  dee  Holutioiiti  nouTeUea,  et  appliqu^  le  premier,  daai 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB^LARD.  487 

description  given  of  scholasticism  by  Cousin  well  ap* 
plies  to  his  teaching :  *'  the  labor  of  thought,  in  the  ser- 
vice of  the  prevalent  faith,  and  under  the  supervision 
of  Church  authority."^  More,  undoubtedly,  was  pro- 
phetically indicated  than  was  immediately  signified  by 
his  effort  logically  to  formulate  and  systematically  to 
organize  theological  doctrine,  adjusting,  if  he  might, 
to  the  reason  of  men  the  mysteries  of  the  faith.  Yet 
his  apparent  success  in  the  new  undertaking  was  rapidly 
giving  him  reputation  and  influence. 

Ab^lard  was  too  independent  and  self-assertive  in 
his  natural  genius,  too  conscious  of  power,  and  too 
eager  for  discussion,  to  be  readily  submissive  to  any 
teacher,  while  William  was  certainly  not  the  man  to 
subdue,  assimilate,  and  freshly  mould  the  versatile  and 
haughty  intellectual  life  of  the  daring  young  Breton. 
The  understanding  of  the  latter,  even  at  that  time,  was 
rapid  and  intrepid,  acute  in  analysis,  retentive  of  pre- 
vious mental  processes,  positive  and  perhaps  stubborn 
in  conclusions.  He  had  a  genius  for  argumentation, 
as  real  as  that  which  afterward  appeared  in  Poussin 
for  painting,  or  in  Richelieu  for  administration.  He 
expressed  his  thought  with  easy  grace,  as  well  as  with 
youthful  ardor  and  vigor,  and  abundantly  commended 
it  by  clear  and  persuasive  illustration;  and  he  had 

r^le  de  Kotra-Dame,  \m  (ormm  de  la  logiqae  k  rcnseignement  dm  ehoMS 
aaintfls:  oe  qni  a  fait  dire  qa'il  avait,  le  prmaier,  profeas^  pabliqnement  U 
thMogie  k  Paris,  et  d'una  mani^re  contentiema,  en  c«  aena  qn'il  aiirait 
i&tiodait  la  th^logie  aoolastiqae.  On  Ta  anrnommi  la  Ooltmiu  da  doc* 
teun,  ->  RAmraAT :  Fie  ^Ah&ard,  i  p.  11. 

^  Le  moyen  tge  n'ett  pas  antre  ehoee  dana  Tordre  de  resprit  qne  le 
x^ne  abeolu  de  la  religion  chr^tienne  et  de  I'lftgliae.  La  philoaophie  da 
mojen  tge  ne  ponyait  done  itre  antre  chose  qne  le  trarail  de  la  pens^  an 
•enrich  de  la  foi  r^gnante,  et  sons  la  snrreillaaoe  de  Taatoriti  ecd^sias- 
tiqiM.— J7iK.  Q4n.d€la  PkOotophie,  ^  216.    Ptois  ed.,  1167. 


488  BERNARD  OF  CLAmVAUX  : 

been  disciplined  already  in  dialectical  contest  Ere 
long  he  came,  therefore,  into  natural  conflict  with  tiie 
master,  and  carried  with  him  the  sympathy  and  ap- 
plause of  many  of  the  students,  while  he  met  the  cen- 
sure and  incurred  the  resentment,  if  not  indeed  the 
lasting  animosity,  of  William  of  Ohampeaux,  whose 
conclusions  he  had  challenged,  and  whose  authority  he 
diminished.  From  that  point  he  dates,  in  his  history 
of  his  calamities,  the  misfortunes  which  followed  him.^ 
To  our  more  scanty  and  fragmentary  knowledge  of  the 
sequences  of  things  the  date  may  not  seem  precisely 
accurate;  but  it  shows  how  keenly  he  felt,  and  how 
vividly  he  remembered,  both  the  fact  and  the  conse- 
quences of  that  critical  collision. 

For  the  present,  however,  he  only  pursued  his  stud- 
ies still  more  widely,  and  after  a  little,  probably  about 
the  year  a.  d.  1102,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  he  es- 
tablished for  himself  a  school  at  Melun,  then  an  impor- 
tant city  in  France  and  a  royal  seat,  about  thirty  miles 
southeast  of  Paris,  and  also  on  the  Seine.  Many 
scholars  were  drawn  to  him  there,  in  spite  of  his 
youth,  perhaps  in  part  by  reason  of  his  youth ;  and  he 
became  a  favorite  with  those  prominent  and  controlling 
in  secular  affairs.  In  a  short  time,  however,  with  the 
restlessness  of  his  nature,  he  removed  his  school  from 
that  city  to  Corbeil,  half-way  nearer  to  Paris,  and  there, 
excited  perhaps  by  his  closer  proximity  to  the  capital, 
he  assumed  such  immense  and  continuous  labors  that 
his  health  broke  down.  A  Parisian  physician,  who 
saw  him  in  his  sickness,  expressed  the  general  estimate 
of  his  acquirements  and  his  powers  when  he  declared 

^  Hino  calamit&tnm  meamm,  qua  nime  nsque  peraeyerant,  ooepera&t 
exordia,  et  quo  ampUas  &iDa  eztende1»tar  nostra,  aliena  in  me  eaooenaa 
•■t  inridia.  —  Opera^  torn.  L  p.  4. 


IN  HIS  CONTROYEBST  WITH   AB^LARD.  489 

in  emphatic  words,  which  were  afterward  adopted  by 
the  monks  as  an  epitaph  of  his  patient^  that  Ab^lard 
^  knew  whatever  was  knowable.  V  i  He  retamed  thence 
to  his  home  in  Brittany,  for  physical  restoration. 

A  few  years  later,  while  he  was  still  absent  from  the 
city,  his  old  master  and  adversary,  William  of  Cham* 
peaux,  withdrew  from  Paris  with  some  of  his  disciples, 
to  what  was  subsequently  known  as  the  Abbey  of  St 
Victor,  where  he  continued  his  instruction ;  and  about 
A.  D.  1108  Ab^lard,  being  then  nearly  thirty  years  of 
age,  appeared  again  in  the  diminishing  group  of  the 
master's  scholars,  restored  to  health,  and  refreshed  no 
doubt  in  mental  vigor,  by  his  interval  of  rest  from  ex- 
citement and  labor.  Again,  however,  and  apparently 
soon,  he  came  into  collision  with  the  lecturer,  on  the 
doctrine  of  Bealism,  or  the  positive  existence  of  uni- 
▼ersals, —  like  Humanity,  for  example, — and  their  es- 
sential presence  in  individuals  of  a  species.  Of  this 
doctrine  William  was  a  chief  champion.  Ab^lard  was 
no  doubt  familiar  with  the  discussion,  through  previous 
training  under  Roscellinus,  whose  theory,  however,  he 
did  not  wholly  accept ;  and  he  so  vigorously  and  per- 
sistently assailed  the  master  as  to  compel  him  to 
modify  his  statement,  and  practically  to  retire  from 
his  previous  ground.  This,  doubtless,  only  deepened  the 
animosity  toward  him  of  him  whom  he  thus  anew  de- 
feated, and  made  his  further  attendance  on  the  school 
practically  impossible.^ 

^  The  iDscription  on  the  tomb  at  St  Marcel :  *'  Est  aatis  in  tnmulo, 
Petras  hie  jaoet  Abelardoa,  Ciii  soli  patuit  scibile  qnidqnid  erat"  See 
Hist.  litt,  torn,  zii  p.  101. 

'  Ah^lard's  aoconnt  of  the  matter  is  this :  "  Erat  autem  in  ea  sententia 
de  eommnnitate  oniTersalium,  nt  eamdem  essentialiter  rem  totam  simtil 
■Engnlis  sais  inesse  astmeret  indiyidais ;  quorum  qnidem  nulla  esset  in  \ 
itia  diTeraitas^  sad  sola  mnltitndine  accidentiam  -vazietas.    Sio  antem 


440  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

For  a  short  time  he  taught  in  the  Cathedral-school 
in  Paris,  from  which  William  had  withdrawn;  then 
again  at  Melnn,  where  he  had  before  made  himself  fa- 
mous ;  and  after  a  time,  outside  the  walls  of  Paris,  on 
the  height  of  Saint-Genevidve,  in  the  cloister  of  a  church. 
Some  years  later,  his  father  and  his  mother  having  both 
embraced  the  conventual  life,  and  his  veteran  antago- 
nist, William  of  Champeaux,  having  finally  withdrawn 
from  his  place  in  the  schools,  and  become  bishop  of 
Chftlons-sur-Mame,  in  a.  b.  1113,  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
four  he  became  himself  the  admired  head  of  those 
Parisian  schools  which  were  afterward  to  be  developed, 
under  the  charter  of  Philip  Augustus  in  a.  d.  1200, 
into  the  powerful  and  renowned  University.  Of  course 
he  was  not  learned,  in  the  modern  sense  and  range  of 
that  word;  no  man  of  his  century  could  be.  But  he 
read  the  Latin  authors,  classical  and  patristic,  with  ease 
and  ardor,  and  often  quoted  them ;  he  knew  something 
of  Greek,  though  prol^ibly  not  enough  to  enable  him  to 
read  in  the  original  even  extracts  from  his  favorite 
teachers,  Plato  and  Aristotle;^  and  after  he  had  at- 
tained tiie  highest  rank  among  his  young  contempora- 
ries for  philosophical  subtlety  and  boldness,  and  for  a 
singularly  clear  and  animating  eloquence  in  setting 
forth  his  thought,  he  turned  his  attention  to  theology, 

iBtam  tunc  snam  correzit  sententiaiD,  at  deinceps  rem  eamdem  non  eMtn- 
tialiter,  sed  indiflTerenter  dioeret.  .  .  .  Hinc  tantum  roboris  et  aactoritatia 
nostra  aoacepit  diacipUna,  nt  ii,  qm  antea  Tefaementioa  magiatro  ilH  noatro 
adharebant,  et  mazime  noBtram  infestabant  doctrinam,  ad  noatraa  oonyo* 
larent  aeholaa."  —  Opera,  HUt.  Calamity  torn.  i.  p.  5. 

^  Noua  ne  Tonloiia  pas  dire  qa'Ab^lard  ignorait  le  gree  an  point  da  ne 
ponroir  ae  rendre  eompte  de  qnelqnes  mots  iaoUa  dont  il  arait  tons  las  yenx 
la  traduction.  II  est  possible  qu'il  edt  quelqne  teintare  des  iUmtsatt  de  la 
grammaire  grecqae ;  maia  il  ne  aavait  pas  y^ritablement  le  gree,  et  11  ne 
poQYait  mettre  k  profit  les  Pires  et  les  aatenrs  grecs  en  tWjs-petit  nombre 
^n'on  possMait  k  cette  ipoqae.  «-  CovazH :  Inirod,  Ouv,  Inid,,  p.  zlviiL 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYERST  WITH   AB&ABD.  44 1 

and  determined  to  become  equal  master  of  that  For 
this  purpose  he  placed  himself  under  the  instruction  of 
Anselm  of  Laon, — not  at  all  to  be  confoimded  with 
Anselm  of  Canterbury, —  who  was  at  the  time,  and  had 
been  for  years,  in  great  repute  as  a  teacher  in  theology, 
attracting  students  from  far  and  near.  It  was  very 
likely  not  unjust  to  this  veteran  theological  instructor, 
—  there  have  been  such  since  at  different  times, —  and 
it  was  certainly  characteristic  of  Ab^lard,  that  he  took 
almost  at  once  the  impression  of  Anselm  that  he  had 
marvellous  facility  in  speech,  with  very  little  sense; 
was  as  a  tree  loaded  with  leaves  but  with  no  fruity  like 
the  barren  fig-tree  cursed  of  the  Master ;  that  when  he 
lighted  his  fire  there  was  abundance  of  smoke  but  no 
flame.  ^  The  student  soon  neglected  the  lessons  which 
he  found  so  unsatisfactory,  and  after  a  little,  being  in* 
cited  in  part  it  would  appear  by  the  taunts  of  his  fellow- 
students,  he  began  to  lecture  himself  on  the  writings  of 
the  prophet  Ezekiel.  Even  those  who  had  derided  him 
came  to  hear  him,  and  were  soon  as  much  delighted  as 
surprised  by  the  extraordinary  readiness  with  which  he 
set  forth  and  illustrated  the  contents  of  the  prophecy, 
Anselm  was  naturally  irritated  by  the  sudden  success 
in  his  own  department  of  this  confident  and  contemp* 
tuous  scholar,  and  interdicted  his  lectures  at  Laon, 
forcing  him  to  return  to  Paris. 

There,  all  schools  were  now  open  to  him.  He  was 
welcomed  with  enthusiasm,  and  was  probably  at  that 

1  Verboram  usnm  habebat  mirabUem,  aed  sensa  contemptibilem,  et 
Tatione  yacaam.  Qnam  ignem  accenderet,  domain  anam  famo  implebat, 
non  luce  Ulnstrabat.  Arbor  ejna  tota  in  foliis  aspicientibua  a  longe  con* 
spicua  Tidebatar,  aed  propinqnantibua,  at  diligentiiia  intnentiboa  iDfractao« 
reperiebatar.  Ad  banc  itaque  qnum  aoceasisaem  nt  fmctum  inda  coUigo* 
rem,  deprehendi  illam  ease  ficalneam  cni  maledixit  Dominna.  —  Optra^ 
Hiat  Calamit,  pi  7. 


442  BERNARD  OF  GLAIRTAUZ. 

time  made  a  canon  in  the  Church.  Bdmusat  has  given 
a  picture  of  him  as  he  then  appeared,  imaginative  of 
course,  but  not,  I  conceive,  essentially  overdrawn,  and 
certainly,  in  the  light  of  what  ere  long  followed,  full  of 
an  unspeakable  pathos.  He  speaks  of  him  as  a  man  of 
a  broad  brow,  a  keen  and  haughty  glance,  and  a  proud 
step,  whose  beauty  preserved  the  brilliance  of  youth 
while  taking  upon  it  the  more  marked  lines  and  deeper 
tints  of  a  complete  manhood.  He  mentions  particu- 
larly his  grave  yet  careful  dress,  the  elegance  of  his 
manners,  the  imposing  grace  of  his  bearing,  in  which 
yet  appeared  a  certain  indolent  negligence,  such  as 
follows  naturally  the  habit  of  success  and  the  conscious- 
ness of  power,  and  the  admiring  attention  fixed  upon 
him  by  those  who  made  way  for  him,  with  their  eager- 
ness to  hear  any  word  from  his  lips.  People  thronged 
to  see  him  as  he  passed ;  men  hurried  to  their  doors ; 
women  thrust  aside  the  curtains  from  their  narrow 
windows ;  Paris  had  adopted  him,  says  lUmusat,  as  its 
own  child,  its  ornament,  and  its  luminary.  It  was  the 
most  tranquil  and  brilliant  period  in  Ab^lard's  career.^ 
The  times  were,  in  many  respects,  peculiarly  favor- 
able to  the  extension  of  the  influence  and  the  promotion 
of  the  fame  of  a  man  like  him.  Ideas  were  more  and 
more  occupying  men's  minds,  often  dimly  apprehended, 
but  felt  to  be  essential  and  beautiful  powers  in  that 
spiritual  sphere  with  which  the  mind  has  native  relation  ; 
and  ideas  had  now  found  at  Paris  a  fit  and  noble  radi- 
ating centre.  Aspiring  students  from  all  over  Europe 
were  eagerly  converging  upon  it.  It  was  becoming  the 
capital  of  thought  and  discussion  for  many  nations. 
Picts,  Scots,  Gascons,  Normans,  Danes,  Germans, 
Swedes,    Italians,    Spaniards,    crowded    to    hear    its 

1  Tie  d'AWlaid,  torn.  L  pp.  i8-44. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOVEBST  WITH  AB^LABD.  448 

famous  teachers,  among  whom  Ab^lard  was  the 
dominating  figure.  Within  a  year  or  two,  five  thou- 
sand pupils  are  said  to  have  been  gathered  around 
him.  The  number  would  appear  altogether  incredible 
if  it  were  not  attested  by  ample  evidence.  It  has 
been  said,  no  doubt  with  exaggeration,  that  the  number 
of  students  at  Paris  was  greater  than  the  number  of 
citizens ;  ^  and  of  course  the  reach  of  the  influence  of  a 
teacher  there  was  in  the  strictest  sense  continental. 
It  touched  the  future,  as  well  as  the  present ;  and  men 
who  were  afterward  to  be  not  onlj  eminent  but  principal 
persons  in  the  Church  and  in  the  State  were  now  taking 
impressions  from  the  brilliant,  acute,  and  commanding 
eloquence  of  him  whom  the  city  and  the  schools  trium- 
phantly extolled  as  the  first  of  philosophers,  if  not  the 
first  of  living  theologians.  Popes,  cardinals,  archbishops, 
and  princes,  as  well  as  free-thinkers  and  reformers, 
were  being  in  effect  moulded  by  him  for  future  work.^ 

^  Ce  odnoonn  prodigieaz  de  ProfeMenn  €t  de  la  plus  brillante  jeanaaae 
de  rSarope,  qui  yenoit  prendre  de  lears  lemons,  fit  de  ParU  one  aatre 
Athines.  .  .  .  D^  le  miliea  da  si^e,  la  multitude  des  £tudiant8  y  aor- 
passoit  Ib  nombre  des  Citoieiu ;  et  Ton  avoit  peine  k  y  trourer  des  loge- 
ments.  Cecte  circonstance  put  fort  bien  conoourir  k  determiner  le  Roi 
Philippe  Angnste  4  aggrandir  la  ViUe :  et  les  sggrandissements  consider- 
ables qn'il  7  fit,  contribu^rent  de  lear  cdt^  k  y  multiplier  encore  dayantage 
les  fitadiants.  II  y  yenoit  de  toutes  parts  tant  de  monde,  qu'on  a  dit  de 
Paris,  qn'il  ^toit  alors  deyeuu,  comme  Rome,  la  patrie  de  tons  les  habitants 
de  rUniyers.  — Hiti.  Litt,  de  la  France^  tom.  iz.  p.  78  (zii.  si^cle.) 

II  n'etoit  bruit  que  dn  professeur  Ab^lard^  non-seulement  en  France, 
mais  dans  les  pays  Strangers.  L'Aigou,  la  Bretagne,  la  Flandre,  T Angle- 
terre,  I'AUemagne,  se  h&t^rent  d'enyoyer  leur  jeunes  sigets  k  Paris  pour  se 
former  auz  sdenoes  sous  nn  docteur  si  renomm^.  En  un  mot,  jamais  dcole 
dans  la  capitals  n'ayoit  ^t^  si  brillante  que  la  sienne.  —  HiaL  IaU,^  zii. 
pp.  91-92. 

To  hare  had  John  of  Salisbury  for  a  pupil  was  of  itself  a  great  dis- 
tinction. 

*  De  oatte  odUbrs  ^cole  sont  sortis  nn  pape,  diz-nenf  cardinauz,  plus  dt 


444  BERNARD   OF   CLAIRYAUX  : 

In  the  same  jear,  a.  d.  1113«  when  Aboard  thns 
became  not  an  admired  leader  only,  but  almost  an 
acknowledged  monarch,  in  the  domain  of  European 
discussion,  Bernard  with  his  companions  entered  the 
convent  of  Giteaux,  and  began  that  life  of  severe  and  un- 
ceasing  monastic  discipline  which  was,  he  hoped,  to  bring 
his  spirit  near  to  Ood.  He  was  twenty-two  years  of  age, 
and  Ab^Iard  thirty-four.  They  certainly  could  have 
known  very  little  of  each  other,  probably  nothing,  though 
the  fame  of  the  exulting  champion  of  the  schools  may 
possibly  in  its  echoes  have  reached  the  ear  of  the  young 
monk.  But  the  contrast  between  them,  as  they  thus 
stand  before  us,  is  as  striking,  almost,  as  any  contrast 
in  history. 

Both  of  them  were  of  noble  descent,  born  in  castles, 
and  bred  in  whatever  was  rich  and  elegant  in  the 
fashion  of  the  time.  Both  were  of  religious  households, 
and  the  parents  of  both  closed  their  life  in  convents, 
except  that  Aletta,  the  mother  of  Bernard,  had  trans- 
ferred the  cloister-life  to  her  castle.  Both  were  beauti- 
ful in  person,  graceful  in  manner,  and  had  the  power  of 
strangely  attracting  those  who  came  within  their  range. 

dnqoante  ^t^qm  on  archcv^aea  de  France,  d*Aiigleterre  et  d'AUemagiM^ 
et  on  bien  plus  gimnd  nombre  encore  de  ces  hommes  anxquels  earent  aim- 
Tent  alKaire  lea  papea,  lea  ^y^aea  et  lea  cardinaux,  comma  Amand  de 
Breada,  et  beancoap  d'aatrea.  On  a  fait  monter  k  plua  de  dnq  mOie  le 
nombre  dea  diaciplea  qui  ae  r^unirent  alori  aatonr  d'Abailard.  —  GvnoT : 
Abaiiard  et  HilcUe^  p.  zriiL    Paria  ed.,  185& 

Beauooap  de  aea  aectatears  ^talent  nudntenant  aaaea  ayanc^  dana  U 
carri^  poor  Taider  de  Vantorit^  de  rinflaence  on  de  la  imputation  qn'fla 
ayaient  acqniaea ;  I'^iae  en  comptait  plnsieara  panni  aea  granda  digoi- 
tairea.  Qnelqnea-nna,  strangers  k  la  France,  et  m&ne  k  la  Oanle,  avaieiit 
rapport^  dana  lenr  patrie  aon  aoavenir  et  aea  opiniona.  On  diaait  qn'ellea 
avaient  p^nitri  dana  le  aacri  coU^.  Sea  andena  diadplea  peoplaient  Itt 
tanga  iler^  de  I'enaeignement,  de  la  litt^iatore  et  dn  deigi.  ->  RAmmAT ; 
^i$  dPAbtlard,  torn.  i.  p.  166. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOVEBST  WITH  ABtLAJBLD.  446 

It  would  seem,  at  first  sight,  as  if  two  men  with  a  closer 
resemblance  could  hardly  have  stood  at  the  same  time 
within  the  circle  of  Christendom.  But  their  unlikeness 
went  back  to  the  centres  of  life,  and  in  whatsoever  was 
morally  distinctive  they  were  absolutely  antipathetic. 
Ab^lard  was  self-confident,  luxurious,  proud,  and  already, 
or  soon,  was  falling  into  licentious  habits.^  Bernard 
was  austere,  severely  self-disciplined,  witli  a  heart  which 
hungered  for  one  thing  supremely,  likeness  to  God. 

Proficiency  in  science  was  the  ideal  of  one,  sainthood 
of  the  other.  Ab^lard  loved  the  city,  great  audiences, 
fame.  Bernard  loved  the  woods,  the  solitary  medi- 
tation, the  companionship  of  the  few  who  were  in  close 
spiritual  sympathy  with  him.  He  would  gladly  have 
effaced  his  name  from  the  records  of  mankind,  if  he 
mig^t  have  the  inward  assurance  that  that  name  was 
inscribed  in  God's  Book  of  Life.  Ab^lard's  enthusiasm, 
so  far  as  it  did  not  concern  his  own  aims  and  personal 
ambitions,  was  moved  toward  great  thinkers ;  Bernard's 
toward  the  holy.  The  one  was  a  splendid  man  of  the 
world,  accomplished  in  his  art,  imperious  in  his  spirit, 
and  at  the  time  unrivalled  in  his  position ;  the  other  was 
a  predestined  monk,  self-searching  and  self-abased,  pen- 
itent, believing,  and  wholly  intent  on.  doing  God's  will. 

*  Sed  quontam  prosperitaA  stnltos  semper  inflat,  et  mandaoa  tranqnillitaa 
Tigorem  enerrat  animiy  et  per  camales  illecebras  facile  reaolyit ;  qanm  jam 
me  solum  in  mundo  superesse  philosophom  estimarem,  nee  ullam  alterius 
inquietationem  foimidarem,  frena  libidioi  crept  laxare,  qui  antea  yixeram 
Gontinentissime ;  et  qno  amplins  in  philosopbia  yel  sacra  lectione  profeoe- 
rem,  amplina  a  philoeophia  et  divinis  immonditia  vitm  recedebam. — Opera, 
Bid.  CcUamit,,  i.  p.  9. 

In  bis  second  letter  to  Hdloise,  written  long  after,  be  says  witb  a  sad 
confession:  '  Amor  mens,  qoi  utnimqne  nostrum  peccatis  inrolyebat,  con- 
enpiscentia,  non  amor  dicendus  est  Miseras  in  te  meas  yoluptates  im* 
plebam,  et  boc  erat  totum  quod  amabam.** — Opera,  L  p.  108. 


446  BSRNABD  OF  CLAIBVA0X  : 

While  AMIard,  therefore,  was  astonishing  the  metropolis, 
and  fixing  the  gaze  of  Europe  on  himself,  bj  the  fresh* 
ness,  boldness,  and  yivacity  of  his  thought,  and  by  the 
unusual  brilliancy  and  energy  with  which  he  expressed 
it,  Bernard  was  occupied  with  the  intense  culture  of 
piety,  and  in  trying  to  uphold  the  spirit  of  his  monks  ; 
he  was  joyfully  li?ing  on  roots  and  bran,  was  seeing 
visions  in  his  cell,  was  striving  to  get  the  wilderness 
subdued,  and  was  searching  with  all  the  fervor  of  his 
soul  after  that  consummate  fellowship  with  the  Master 
in  which  to  him  was  Life  Eternal. 

The  two  stood  at  points  so  remote,  in  outward  situ- 
ation and  in  moral  significance,  that  it  might  seem  im- 
possible that  they  ever  should  com^  into  personal  col- 
lision; and  Ab^lard  would  no  doubt  have  smiled  with 
gay  incredulity  at  the  thought,  if  it  had  been  suggested, 
that  the  frail,  abstemious,  and  secluded  young  monk, 
unknown  of  men,  and  hiding  himself  in  the  ^*  Valley  of 
Wormwood,'^  would  ever  be  able  to  challenge  and  shat- 
ter his  haughty  supremacy.  But  it  might  even  then 
have  been  foreseen,  by  those  who  thoroughly  knew  the 
two  men,  that  their  relations  in  after  life  could  hardly 
be  cordial,  and  that,  if  they  ever  should  come  to  combat, 
the  younger,  and  apparently  the  weaker  of  the  two, 
would  not  be  the  first  to  ground  his  arms.  It  was  not, 
however,  till  years  after  this  that  any  such  collision 
occurred ;  and  meantime  Ab^lard's  life  had  been  smit- 
ten by  occurrences  so  startling  and  tragic  that  the  world 
never  since  has  been  able  to  forget  them. 

In  A.D.  1118  the  most  distinguished  and  engaging 
maiden  in  Paris  was  H^oi'se,  niece  of  one  Fulbert,  a 
canon  of  the  Cathedral,  and  living  in  his  Iiouse.  She 
may  not  have  been  in  person  so  surpassingly  beautiful  as 
the  feeling  of  after  times  has  loved  to  fancy  her.    At 


IN  HIS  C0NTB0VEB8Y  WITH  AB^LARD.  447 

least  Ab^lard,  writing  afterward,  did  not  so  describe 
her.^  But  she  was  intellectually  superior  to  any  other 
woman  of  the  time  whose  name  has  come  to  us,  and 
was,  as  her  subsequent  life  and  letters  abundantly  show, 
of  a  remarkably  engaging  and  noble  nature.  She  had 
been  educated  by  the  nuns  in  the  convent  of  Argenteuil, 
not  far  from  Paris,  and  had  now  come  back  to  the  gay 
capital,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  to  become  a  centre  of 
attraction  and  admiration  to  all  who  knew  her  rare 
qualities  of  mind  and  heart.  Her  acquirements  were 
unusual,  her  speech  charming,  her  manner  delightful; 
her  aspirations  were  high,  and  her  peculiarly  winning 
and  splendid  spirit  must  already  have  found  general 
recognition.  To  the  work  of  seducing  her  from  the  path 
and  law  of  feminine  virtue  Ab^lard  applied  himself,  with 
a  success  which  is  known  of  all.  The  renown  of  his 
learning,  the  fascination  of  his  real  and  striking  genius 
for  letters,  his  fine  and  grand  manners,  and  tlie  glamour 
of  universal  admiration  with  which  he  was  attended, 
made  the  conquest  more  easy,  as  he  had  foreseen ;  *  and 
he  was  not  long  in  finally  subduing  the  brilliant  young 

'  AMUid's  d««cription  of  ]i«r  U :  "  Brat  qnippe  in  ipsa  dTitate  Puiriiui 
adoleacentula  quiedam  nonune  Heloissa.  .  .  .  Qam  qunm  per  faoiem  non 
enet  infiina,  per  abandautiam  litteranun  erat  saprema.  Nam  quo  bo- 
nam  boc,  litteratorue  scilicet  ecientie,  in  mulieriboB  eat  rarius,  eo  amplius 
poeUam  commendabat,  et  in  toto  regno  nominatiiwimam  feeerat.*'  —  HitL 
OcUamiL,  Opera,  L  p.  9. 

Milman  speaks  of  ber  as  "  distinguiahed  for  ber  sarpasaing  beauty  ** 
(Hist  Lat  Christ,  it.  201) ;  R^mnsat  says,  "  8a  figare,  sans  avoir  une 
parfaite  beant^  I'aurait  dUtiugn^ "  (Vie  d* Ab^lard,  l  47) ;  Michelet  de- 
scribee her  as  "tonte  jeane»  belle,  savante*  (Hist  de  France,  ii.  890). 
The  natoral  impreaslon  of  Ab^lard's  words  is  of  a  rather  plain  person,  with 
the  light  of  genios  and  ardent  feeling  shining  in  the  face. 

'  Tanti  qaippe  tunc  nomlnis  eram,  et  jarentntis  et  fornus  gratia 
pnseminebam,  nt  qnamcanqne  feminarum  nostro  dignarer  amore^  nnllam 
vanrsr  repolsam.  —  Opera,  Hist  Calamit,  i  10. 


448  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUZ: 

girl  to  his  relentless  and  vehement  passion.  The  birfh 
of  their  son,  their  subsequent  marriage,  the  savage  pun- 
ishment inflicted  upon  Ab^lard  hj  the  desperately  en- 
raged uncle  of  H^loise,  their  final  separation  into 
convents,  and  the  touching  and  memorable  correspond- 
ence between  them,  which  began  later,  and  which  never 
has  ceased  to  interest  the  world,  —  all  these  are  known, 
and  upon  them  it  is  not  needful  to  dwell. 

But  it  is  distinctly  important  to  observe  that  from  the 
time  of  his  first  relations  with  H^loise  not  only  the  fame 
of  Ab^lard  began  to  decline  and  his  influence  to  wane,  but 
his  essential  power  of  intellect  and  will  to  darken  and 
falter.  He  says  himself  that  he  went  thenceforth  re- 
luctantly to  the  schools,  and  withdre^vir  from  them  as 
speedily  as  possible.^  His  books,  lectures,  pupils,  were 
neglected,  and  he  spoke  no  more  from  an  active  imagi- 
nation, under  a  present  keen  impulse,  out  of  thoughts 
brimming  with  results  of  recent  research,  or  with  the 
full  swing  of  his  mind ;  he  only  repeated  what  his  lips 
found  to  say,  under  the  suggestions  of  memory  and  of 
habit.  And  when  life  had  been  blasted  for  him,  and  his 
career  had  been  fatally  broken,  in  the  dreadful  result, 
it  was  long  before  he  regained  enough, —  I  will  not  say 
of  the  old  brilliant  audacity  of  his  spirit,  for  that  never 
came  back,  —  but  of  mental  self-control,  the  power  of 
consecutive  intellectual  processes,  to  enable  him  to  re- 
sume his  teaching.  He  never  permanently  resumed  it 
in  Paris. 

H^loisc,  who  waa  far  nobler  as  a  woman  than  he  was 
as  a  man,  who  had  long  resisted  his  urgency  for  the 
marriage  which  should  restore  her  good  name,  lest  it 
should  embarrass  and  check  his  career,  who  had  only  at 
last  retired  to  a  convei^t  at  his  command,  and  who  to 

^  Hist  Calamity  Open^  L  p.  11. 


IN  HIS  OONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB&ABD.  449 

the  end,  when  the  honored  and  venerated  Lady  Abbess 
of  her  convent,  never  forgot  what  had  been  to  her  the 
magnificence  of  her  life  in  her  intense  and  self-sacrificing 
devotion  to  this  superb  son  of  Brittany,  evidently  grew 
in  greatness  of  spirit  by  her  terrible  sorrows.  Cousin  has 
said  of  her,  not  extravagantly,  that  ^^  she  loved  like  Saint 
Theresa,  she  wrote  like  Seneca,  while  her  irresistible  grace 
charmed  Saint  Bernard  himself/'^  De  B^musat  says 
that  ^^  her  century  put  her  at  the  head  of  all  women ; " 
and  he  adds,  for  himself,  ^^  I  do  not  know  that  posterity 
has  contradicted  her  century."'  After  her  death  she 
was  described  on  the  annals  of  her  convent  as  ^^  Mother 
and  first  Abbess  of  this  house,  most  illustrious  in  learn* 
ing  and  religion."  But  Ab^lard  plainly  sank  beneath 
the  stroke ;  and  after  that  frightful  crisis  in  his  life  the 
former  glow  and  joy  of  his  genius  only  intermittently 
and  fitfully  reappeared. 

^  Enfin,  poor  qne  rien  ne  mAnqn&t  k  la  smgnlariU  de  sa  Tie  et  k  U 
popularity  de  son  nom,  oe  dialecticien,  qui  ayait  ^lipa^  Boacelin  et  Gail* 
laame  de  Champeau:,  oe  th^ologien  contre  leqnel  se  leva  le  Boseuet  da 
doiuikme  si^le,  dtait  bean*  poete,  et  moBicieii ;  U  Caisait  en  laDgae  ynl- 
gaire  dee  cbaiiaous  qui  amuaaient  lea  ^liera  et  lea  damea ;  et  chanoine  de 
la  oathMrale,  profesaenr  do  dottre,  il  fut  aimi  jnaqu'an  ploa  abeoln  d^- 
Tonement  par  cette  noble  cr^ture,  qui  aima  comma  aainte  ThMae,  ^eririt 
quelquefoia  comme  Sto^ue,  et  dont  la  grftce  doTait  toe  irr^aistible, 
poisqu'eUe  charma  Saint  Bernard  lui-m^me.  —  Hid.  OhUraU  d*  la  Pkiloi.^ 
p.  228y  note.    Paris  ed.,  1867. 

*  Son  ai^le  la  mettait  au-desaua  de  toutea  lea  femmes,  et  je  ne  aais  li  la 
poat^t^  a  dteenti  aon  nhcle,  —  Fie  ^AhUard,  L  262>263. 

Hiloise  eat,  je  croii,  la  prsmiire  dea  femmes.  —  Ibid,  p.  278. 

Elle  appelait  saint  Bernard  %m  faux  apUre,  et  lui-m6me  paralt  n'aToir 
entretenn  ayec  elle  que  dee  relations  bienveillantes.  .  .  .  Ainsi,  les  chefs 
des  institutions  les  plus  pnissantes,  Clairyauz  et  Cluni,  les  rois  du  doUre^ 
traitaient  sur  nn  pied  d'^lit^  ayec  la  reine  des  religienses,  ayec  oette  doete 
abbesse,  d'une  yie  si  chaste  et  si  pure,  et  qui  aurait  donn^  mUle  fois  son 
Toile,  sa  croix  et  sa  couronne,  pour  entendre  encore  chanter  sous  sa  fentos 
par  un  en&nt  de  la  Cit^  qu'elle  <tait  la  mattresse  du  mattre  Pierre.  —  Fi» 
i^JhOard,  torn.  L  pp.  167-168. 


460  BEBNASD  OP  GLAIBTAUX  : 

I  caaQot  fartlier  follow  his  career  with  particular 
detail.  Only  its  prominent  points  can  be  indicated,  and 
this  rapidly.  He  first  entered  the  abbey  of  St  Denis, 
near  Paris,  whose  church  became  the  Westminster  of 
the  French  kings  until  the  fury  of  Revolution  broke  upon 
it,  and  whose  banner  of  the  golden  flame  became  the 
oriflamme  of  France  till  the  day  of  Agincourt.  But  he 
soon  came  into  vehement  conflict  with  both  monks  and 
abbot,  whose  ignorance  repelled  him,  while  their  scan- 
dalous life  jarred  on  his  remorseful  heart.  Repulsed 
from  within,  and  probably  invited  from  without,  he  with* 
drew  to  a  house  dependent  on  the  convent,  and  resumed 
his  lectures,  attracting  at  once  a  throng  of  disciples. 
He  aimed  to  give  philosophical  proof,  explanation  and 
illustration,  of  the  Christian  doctrines  as  held  at  the 
time;  and  a  book  styled  ^^Introduction  to  Theology," 
prepared  by  him,  was  substantially  a  digest  of  his  lec- 
tures, especially  on  the  nature  of  God  as  combining 
Unity  and  Trinity.  It  was  prepared  with  special  refer- 
ence to  those  who  acknowledged  no  obligation  to  believe 
a  doctrine  without  fully  understanding  it,  and  to  whom 
forms  of  words  had  no  value  unless  their  meaning  were 
intellectually  clearly  perceived.^  His  effort  was,  in  other 
words,  to  present  a  rational  philosophy  of  the  Christian 
religion,  and  without  denying  its  transcendent  truths  to 
so  commend  them  to  the  intelligence  of  men  as  to  wm 
for  them  just  mental  assent,  and  to  reconcile  with  them 
the  more  searching  and  inquisitive  thought  of  the  time. 

^  Qaemdam  theoIoguB  tnustatam  de  Unitate  et  Trixiitete  divisa  sefaolari- 
bnB  nofltris  componerem,  qui  hnmuias  et  philosophic^  rationes  nqmnbaiiti 
et  plus  qa»  intelligi  qnam  qiue  did  possent  efflagitahuit ;  dioeDtes  qnidem 
▼erboram  saperfiaam  eme  prolatlonem,  qoam  intelllgentia  non  aeqneretor. 
nee  credi  posse  aliquid  nisi  primitns  intellectam,  et  ridicnlosam  esse  afiquen 
allis  pmdicare  quod  nee  ipse»  nee  ilii  qnos  doceiet  inteUeeta  capera 
—  (^era^  Hist.  Calamit,  L  p.  18. 


IN  HIS  OONTBOYEBST  WITH   AB^LARD.  451 

It  was  an  effort,  it  seems  to  us,  which  ought  to  have 
won  the  sympathy  of  those  then  eminent  in  the  Church 
who  could  at  all  forecast  the  future.  But  h^  appears  to 
have  pursued  it  in  a  somewhat  derisive  and  imperious 
spirit,  as  not  at  all  tender  toward  weaker  minds,  and 
either  refusing  to  notice  their  criticisms,  or  answering 
them  with  a  haughty  disdain  which  no  doubt  some- 
times changed  dissentients  into  enemies.  ^  Many  forces, 
too,  were  combining  against  him;  more,  probably,  than 
he  recognized,  while  surrounded  by  the  praise  of  his 
pupils.  The  masters  of  other  schools,  whose  scholars 
were  attracted  by  his  superior  eloquence ;  the  officers  of 
the  Church,  who  did  not  know  to  what  this  thing  might 
grow,  and  who  were  themselves  chiefly  concerned  to 
maintain  the  institutions  from  which  they  derived  profit 
and  fame;  even  the  higher  class  of  minds,  and  the 
nobler  spirits,  who  felt  it  a  true  homage  to  God  to  be- 
lieve, on  His  word,  what  they  could  not  prove  and  did 
not  for  themselves  altogether  understand, — all  these 
were  combined  against  one  whom  they  esteemed  a  rash 
adventurer  on  a  dangerous  path,  if  not  a  concealed 
enemy  of  the  truth. 

Such  a  combination  was  too  strong  for  him ;  and  at  a 
Council  held  at  Soissons  a.  d.  1121,  with  an  unjust 
violence  at  which  many  at  the  time  were  offended,  and 
which  still  stirs  the  indignation  of  readers,  he  was, 
without  any  fair  examination  or  any  opportunity  to  re- 
ply to  his  assailants,  condemned  as  a  Sabellian;  he 
was  compelled  with  his  own  hand  to  cast  his  book  into 
the  flames,  and  was  sent  to  what  was  meant  to  be  a 

1  Ab^lard,  sans  ni^priser  absolament  ces  attaqaea,  lea  reponssa  ayec 
baateiir,  et  r^pondit  par  Tinsnlte  pt  le  d^fi.  Toujours  confiant  et  imp^- 
rieox,  fl  provoquait  unc  luttc  qn'il  tip  cwyait  paa,  je  pense,  qu'on  osftt 
engager.  —  UtMVBAT :  Vie  (TAbilard,  i.  p.  78. 


452  BERNARD  OF  GLAmYAUZ  : 

permanent  imprisonment  in  die  convent  of  St  M^dard, 
not  far  from  the  city.  But  there  was  great  and  general 
dissatisfaction  with  die  action  of  the  Council  Even 
those  who  had  taken  part  in  it  were  constrained  to 
apologize  for  their  vote,  or  to  disavow  it.^  The  papal 
legate  publicly  attributed  the  extraordinary  judgment 
to  French  jealousy  of  Ab^lard,  ^  invidia  Francorum, " 
and  after  a  little  sent  him  back  to  his  convent  at  St. 
Denis. 

Here  again,  however,  he  came  into  another,  still 
ruder  controversy,  with  his  associate  monks;  not  now 
on  any  great  matters  of  theology,  and  not  primarily 
even  on  their  dissoluteness  of  manners,  but  on  the  qfaes* 
tion  concerning  which  his  position  certainly  seems  to  us 
innocent  enough, —  whether  Dionysius  the  Areopagite 
had  in  fact  been  the  founder  of  that  abbey.  The  ad- 
verse opinion  of  Ab^lard  was  fortified  by  a  passage  in 
the  writings  of  the  Venerable  Bede,  to  which  he  ap- 
pealed ;  but  the  monks  felt  that  the  glory  of  their  abbey 
was  being  assailed,  if  not  die  glory  of  the  kingdom  it- 
self; they  became  furious  beyond  bounds,  called  Bede 
a  liar,  and  determined  to  send  Ab^lard  to  the  king,  as 
a  prisoner  of  state,  to  be  punished  for  treason.  He  had 
to  escape  secretly  by  night,  and  fled  into  the  province 
of  Champagne,  where  he  was  kindly  received  by  die 
count,  and  found  a  temporary  refuge  in  the  priory  of 
Saint-Ayoul,  whose  chief  had  been  one  of  his  former 
friends.     The  abbot  of  St  Denis  having  died  in  a.  d. 

^  A  peine  rendu,  cependant,  le  jngementda  concile  fat  loin  derenoontrer 
one  approbation  g^n^rale.  On  troava  dana  aes  proc^da,  mdesse,  dnret^ 
precipitation.  L'oppression  ^tait  ^vidente,  le  droit  tr^-dontenx.  Bfaa- 
conp  d'ailleurs  penchaient  k  croire  la  y^rit^  dn  cM  d'Ab^lard  ;  bientftt 
cenz  qui  avaient  si^g^  k  Soiasona  dnrent  ae  jnatifier ;  plnsienra  repona* 
aaient  la  aoUdarit^  da  jagement  et  d^yoaaient  lear  propre  Tote.  — 
RAmrsAT  :  Vie  tCAbHard,  torn.  i.  p.  100. 

\ 


\ 


m  HIS  CONTBOTERST  WITH  AStLAXD.  458 

1122,  and  having  been  succeeded  by  Suger,  who  was 
not  at  the  time  a  man  of  any  fervor  in  the  faith,  though 
of  Bound  sense  and  political  wisdom,  Ab^lard  at  length 
obtained  his  release  from  the  hated  abbey,  and  was  per- 
.mitted,  on  easy  conditions,  to  live  where  he  pleased. 

He  retired  into  the  neighborhood  of  Troyes,  on  the 
banks  of  the  Ardusson,  with  a  single  attendant,  and 
built  himself  a  small  oratory  of  reeds  and  thatch,  to 
which  he  gave  the  touching  name  '*  The  Paraclete, "  The 
Comforter.  He  was  speedily  followed  thither  by  many 
who  remembered  the  fame  of  his  earlier  teachings,  and 
who  were  eager  to  hear  for  themselves  his  clear  and 
large  thought,  illustrated  by  unusual  learning,  and  ex- 
pressed in  the  melodious  majesty  of  his  renowned  elo- 
quence. Such  multitudes  came  that  they  could  only 
house  themselves  in  cabins  roughly  and  hastily  built 
like  his  own,  by  their  own  hands,  and  the  question  of 
their  daily  subsistence  was  one  hard  to  be  solved.  But^ 
though  many  of  them  highly-born  and  delicately  nur- 
tured, they  cheerfully  faced  and  endured  all  hardship, 
and  inured  themselves  to  difficult  labors,  that  they 
might  be  near  him,  and  receive  what  to  them  were 
kindling  thoughts.  While  themselves  living  in  huts 
they  built  for  him  a  house  of  stone,  took  full  charge  of 
his  daily  provision,  and  replaced  the  rude  oratory  by  a 
spacious  and  handsome  church  to  which  the  name,  The 
Paraclete,  still  adhered.^    His  influence  was  again  sig- 

1  Hahre  do  ehoiz  de  sa  demeure,  il  alia  s'^taUir  sar  lea  bords  de  la 
jMhn  d'Ardoason,  dam  un  liea  d^rt,  yoiain  de  la  ville  de  Nogent-sur- 
Seine.  Sea  diaciplea  ne  tard^rent  paa  k  Yj  renir  troayer.  Ni  Thorreur  dn 
a^oQr,  ni  la  difficult^  de  a'y  procnrar  lee  cboaea  n^ceeeairea  K  la  Tie,  ne 
rebat^rent  oette  mnltitnde  de  jeunea  gena,  la  plnpart  d^licatement  ilevia. 
La  compagnie  de  lenr  mattre,  avidea  qn'ila  ^toient  de  aea  le9ona,  lenr 
tenoit  lien  de  tont.  Ponr  ne  lai  laiaaer  aucnn  atget  de  diatractionf  ill 
ae  chaig^rent  de  pourroir  k  aon  entretien.    La  manito  dont  ila  a'acqnit- 


454  BEBNJIRD  OP  GLAAVAUZ: 

nal  and  wide,  and  was  rapidlj  widening ;  and  it  seemed 
aa  if  at  last,  after  the  tempests  which  had  beaten  <hi 
his  life,  smooth  seas  were  before  him,  and  a  prosperous 
voyage. 

But  his  heallh  was  broken;  his  nervous  system  ap- 
pears, as  would  be  natural,  to  have  been  shattered  or 
disorganized;  he  was  by  turns  rash  and  timid,  suspi- 
cious and  defiant;  successive  calamities  had  come  to 
seem  to  him  the  natiiral  order  of  his  life;  and  he  grew 
to  be  afraid  of  his  own  influence,  and  of  the  renewed 
and  more  vehement  attacks  which  he  feared  that  it  might 
bring  upon  him.  He  grew  restless,  especially,  in  view 
of  the  possible,  perhaps  the  probable,  antagonism  to 
him  of  Norbert,  the  head  of  the  famous  order  of  Pre- 
monstrants,  and  of  Bernard,  then  for  nearly  ten  years 
established  at  Clairvaux.^  It  does  not  appear  that  up 
to  this  time  he  had  ever  met  Bernard,  or  that  he  did 
meet  him  till  several  years  later,  when  they  were  both 
at  the  monastery  of  Morigni  with  Innocent  Second. 
But  Clairvauz  and  The  Paraclete  were  in  the  same  dis- 

Urent  de  ce  soia  fit  T^loge  de  lenr  g^n^rosit^.  Gontans  d'liabiter  enz- 
mdmes  dans  des  cabanes  de  roseaux,  ils  lai  b&tirent  an  logement  de  piem^ 
et  conyertirent  le  petit  oratoira  qn*il  avoit  constniit  de  sea  maina,  en  one 
^liae  apaciense  et  bien  om^  Get  Edifice  fat  d^dU  an  Paradet.  — MitL 
'Litt,  torn.  xii.  p.  95. 

^  De  R^musat  gives  a  brilliantly  savage  description  of  tlie  two  men, 
Norbert  and  Bernard,  the  exact  jastice  of  which  can  by  no  means  be  ad- 
mitted, bat  which  ought  perhaps  to  be  quoted,  in  fairness  to  the  learned 
and  eloquent  biographer  and  eulogist  of  Ab^lard  :  — 

**  Deux  hommes  commen^ent  k  s'^lever  dans  T^^ise,  tons  denx  des- 
tines k  devenir  o^l^bres  et  puissants,  bien  qn'k  des  degrds  fort  in^gtox ; 
tons  deux  renomm^s  par  la  pi^t^  le  savoir,  Tactivite,  Vautorit^  par  toatas 
les  vertns  et  toutes  les  passions  qui  font  la  grandeur  d'un  prdtre  ;  toaa  denx 
d'nne  charity  ardeiite  et  d'un  caractire  inflexible,  crnels  k  eux-mtoes,  hum- 
bles et  imp^rieux,  tendres  et  implacables,  faits  pour  Wfler  et  opprimer  la 
torre,  et  ambitienx  d'arriver,  par  les  bonnes  (suvres  et  les  aotes  tyranDiqueSi 
an  rang  des  saints  dans  le  del."  —  Vu  d^AbHard,  torn.  L  p.  114. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB^LABD.  465 

trict,  not  many  leagues  apart ;  and  no  one  could  have 
been  more  alive  than  was  Ab^lard  to  the  essential  dif- 
ferences between  them, — the  one  a  school  of  most 
austere  discipline  in  the  piety  of  the  time,  the  other 
a  school  of  free  inquiry  and  wide-ranging  thought; 
the  one  a  house  to  train  men  to  serve  the  Church  and 
the  Pontiff,  in  whatever  office  these  might  command,  the 
other  a  seminary  in  which  religion  was  regarded  as  ^  a 
science  and  a  sentiment,  not  ai^  institution  or  a  cause. ''  ^ 
Ab^lard  also  felt,  no  doubt,  the  vital  antithesis  be- 
tween his  views  of  life,  duty,  and  truth,  and  Ihose  of 
Bernard ;  and  it  may  easily  have  occurred  to  him  Ihat 
the  younger  monk,  who  was  already  rapidly  becoming 
the  leader  and  counsellor  of  princes  and  of  popes,  might 
have  taken  unfavorable  impressions  concerning  him 
from  William  of  Champeaux  and  Anselm  of  Laon,  both 
of  whom  had  been  friends  of  Bernard  after  being  em- 
bittered against  the  lecturer  whose  fame  had  vastly 
eclipsed  their  own.  At  any  rate,  for  whatever  reason, 
Ab^lard  became  suspicious  of  a  hostility  which  did  not 
yet  appear,  and  expectant  of  an  assault  which  if  it  came 
might  finally  crush  him.  His  temper  had  become  mor- 
bid; his  courage  seemed  to  be  broken,  and  his  whole 
moral  force  to  have  quite  given  way.  If  wandering 
monks  approached  the  Paraclete,  he  thought  they  were 
coming  to  summon  him  to  a  Council,  at  which  his  fate 
had  been  foredoomed.  He  seriously  meditated,  he 
says  himself,  flying  beyond  the  bounds  of  Christendom, 
to  obtain  among  the  infidels  a  rest  and  security  which 
he  despaired  of  finding  in  Christian  lands.  ^    Amid  all 

1  Btoasat,  Vie  d'AMkid,  i.  118. 

S  8»pe  Mit«m  (Dens  sdt)  in  tintam  lapmu  siiiii  deipeimtioneiDv  nt 
Ghxistianonim  finilma  exeeasia,  ad  gentes  transiTe  diBponerem,  attine  ibi 
qniete,  aab  qnaoonqiu  tribati  paotione,  inter  inimicos  Chriati 


456  BEBNABD  OF  CLJJBYAUZ  : 

the  applause  which  surrounded  his  steps,  he  stood  and 
moved  in  what  was  almost  a  bloody  sweat 

At  just  this  time,  howeyer,  came  to  him,  in  a.  d. 
1125,  an  urgent  invitation  to  become  the  abbot  of  tiie 
monastery  of  St.  Oildas,  in  his  native  province ;  an  in- 
vitation which  he  accepted,  to  an  office  in  which  he 
probably  expected  to  pass  the  remainder  of  his  over- 
shadowed and  unquiet  life.  But  misfortune  pursued 
him  with  a  strange  pertinacity.  The  country  of  the 
convent  was  remote  and  inhospitable,  the  people  around 
it  were  rude  and  uncultured,  the  nei^boring  lord  was 
tyrannical  and  greedy,  and  the  monks  were  of  the  low- 
est and  grossest  class.  Ab^lard  came  at  once  into 
violent  conflict  with  his  dissolute,  refractory,  and  un- 
manageable companions.  He  could  not  control  tiiem, 
and  he  could  not  live  with  them.  He  became  ere  long 
afraid  for  his  life,  feared  assassination,  and  believed, 
whether  with  reason  or  not,  that  they  were  trying  to 
poison  him,  not  only  in  his  daily  food,  but  in  the  wine 
of  the  sacramental  cup.^  There  was  nothing  left  for 
him  but  to  escape  from  the  monastery,  which  he  shortly 
did,  and  to  take  up  again  his  weary  and  solitary  way  in 
the  world. 

Only  one  thing  remained,  accomplished  at  St  Gildas, 
on  which  he  could  look  with  any  satisfaction,  but  that 

▼iyere ;  qaos  tanto  magis  piopitios  me  lutbHtnam  credebam,  qoanto  hm 
minus  chiutianQm  ex  imposito  mihi  erimine  soBpiearentiir,  et  ob  hoc  hor 
lias  ad  aectam  auam  inclinari  posse  crederent  —  Opara^  Hist.  Oakmit., 
i.  29. 

^  O  qaoties  veneno  me  peidere  tentaverant  I  ...  A  taUboa  antsm 
eoram  qaotidianis  insidiis  qaam  mihi  in  administratioiie  eihi  nl  potns 
qnantum  possem  pronderem,  in  ipso  altaris  aaerificio  tozicare  me  moliti 
Bont,  yeneno  scOioet  calici  immisso.  .  .  .  Qni  si  me  tnoaifcitram  afiqno 
prasensiasent,  coimptos  per  peconiam  latrones  in  Tiis  ant  semitiai  vt  as 
interftoarant,  opponehant  -*  fliM.  Oakmii.9  Opsnii  L  8& 


IN  HIS  C0NTB0TEB8T  WITH  ABI^LABD.  457 

gave  him  a  keen  and  deep  pleasure.  H^lo'ise  and  her 
nuns  had  been  constrained  to  leave  their  convent  at 
Argenteuil,  which  had  been  claimed  as  belonging  to  the 
abbey  of  St.  Denis,  and  they  had  been  left  practically 
homeless.  Ab^lard  succeeded  in  transferring  to  them 
the  property  of  the  Paraclete,  in  assisting  to  maintain 
them  there  till  the  new  convent  was  fully  established, 
and  in  seeing  them  fairly  started  on  the  way  to  the 
large  prosperity  which  they  afterward  enjoyed.  To  his 
sore  and  sick  heart  the  place  must  have  been  more  than 
ever  The  Comforter^  when  this  good  work  had  been 
accomplished.  To  the  end  of  his  life  he  doubtless 
looked  back  on  this  passage  in  it  with  grateful  joy.^ 

It  was  after  his  escape  from  St  Oildas,  and  while 
in  a  refuge  which  friendly  hands  had  opened  to  him, 
that  he  wrote  the  History  of  his  Calamities;  a  book 
unique  in  its  kind,  though  showing  some  resemblances, 
no  doubt,  to  the  Confessions  of  Saint  Augustine,  and 
afterward  imitated,  possibly,  in  parts,  in  the  more  arti- 
ficial Confessions  of  Rousseau.  How  often  it  has  been 
commented  on,  reviewed,  analyzed,  you  of  course  are 
aware.  It  is  one  of  the  saddest  books  ever  written; 
and  every  one  who  thoughtfully  reads  it  must  share  the 
feeling  of  his  biographer,  that  ^no  better  instruction 

^  Le  Paraclet  foumit  encore  one  iUastre  preaye  de  rantre  sorte  d'^Ies, 
qui  6toit  poor  les  Religieuaes.  Non-aeulement  on  y  faisoit  nne  6tade  par- 
tiooli^  de  rficriture  Sainte,  dea  onvragea  dee  P^rea  de  Vtigliae,  da  Plaiu- 
chant,  de  la  Mnaiqae  ;  maia  on  a'y  appUqaoit  anaii  k  la  oonnoiasance  de  la 
MMecine  et  de  la  Chinugiey  afin  de  ae  poavoir  paaaer  da  eeoonra  dea  hommea. 
Ab^lard,  qai  dirigeoit  cette  Maiaon  par  lettrea,  yonloit  mSme  qa'outre  la 
langae  Latine,  on  y  appiit  aoaai  le  Gree  et  VH6brea,  en  quoi  il  6toit  un  pea 
aingolier,  oomme  en  beaoooap  d'aatrea  points.  II  avoit  r^U,  que  T Abbeaae 
H^Ioue,  qai  poasMoit  oea  langaea  avec  d*aatrea  beUea  oonnotaaanoea,  lea 
enaeigneroit  k  sea  soeurs.  L'ardeur  qu'ellea  ayoient  en  particalier  poor 
entrer  dana  le  sens  dea  diyinea  ficiitarea,  eat  admirable.  —  JKit.  LUL, 
torn.  iz.  p.  128.    Paris  ad.,  1760. 


458  ^  BERNARD  OF  CIAIBYAUX  : 

can  anjrwhere  be  given  of  the  misery  which  may  come 
with  the  most  beautiful  things  of  the  world,  genins, 
learning,  glory,  love. "  ^  It  had,  however,  one  immedi- 
ate effect,  not  probably  contemplated  by  him,  but  for 
which,  as  for  itself,  the  world  will  remember  it.  A 
copy  of  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  H^loi'se,  in  her  new 
convent,  was  read  by  her  with  an  absorbing  and  pas- 
sionate interest,  and  became  the  occasion  of  her  first 
letter  to  Ab^lard,  and  so  of  the  memorable  correspond- 
ence which  followed.  The  sweetness,  dignity,  and 
passion  of  her  letters  are  in  singular  contrast  with  the 
cooler  and  more  elaborate  tone  by  which  his  are 
marked ;  but  it  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  as  long  as 
the  story  of  human  hearts  continues  to  have  an  interest 
for  men,  these  letters,  translated  a  century  later  into 
the  common  language  of  France,  translated  and  re- 
translated since  into  many  languages,  paraphrased,  ver- 
sified, and  published  in  multitudinous  editions,  will  have 
a  charm  for  those  who  read.  Mr.  Hallam  was  right ;  we 
do  not  care  half  so  much  for  anything  else  in  the  liter- 
ature of  the  time  as  for  these. 

There  followed  some  years  in  the  life  of  Ab^lard, 
after  he  had  finally  left  St  Gildas,  of  the  outward  his- 
tory of  which  we  know  very  little,  but  which  seem  to 
have  been  years  of  special  intellectual  activity  with 
him,  and  in  which  probably  his  principal  literary,  philo- 
sophical, and  theological  works  were  produced.  The  re- 
written "Introduction  to  Theology,"  the  ** Christian 
Theology,  *'  the  "  Commentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Ro- 
mans," the  "Sic  et  Non,"  the  "Dialc^e  between  a 
Jew  and  a  Christian,"  the  "Exposition  of  the  Hexam- 
eron, "  and  the  ethical  book  "  Scito  te  ipsum, "  are  at- 
tributed to  this  period,  with  many  of  his  sermons  and 

i  De  lUmusat,  Vie  d'Abilftrd,  torn,  i  p.  1S9. 


IN  HIS  OONTBOVEBST  WITH   AB&ABD.  459 

briefer  writings ;  and  his  restless  spirit  no  doubt  found 
needed  pleasure  and  repose  in  these  various  labors. 
About  A.  D.  1186  he  again  opened  a  school  on  Mount 
St.  Greneyidve,  and  lectured  there  for  a  short  time  with 
brilliancy  and  success,  though  the  contrast  of  his  dark- 
ened and  waning  age  with  the  splendid  maturity  of 
twenty  years  before  must^  one  would  think,  have  dis- 
heartened and  oppressed  him.  Certainly  one  cannot 
figure  him  revisiting  those  scenes  of  fame  and  of  gloom, 
and  taking  up  with  feebler  force  the  labors  before  so  fa- 
tally broken,  without  a  sense  of  inexpressible  sympathy. 
Precisely  when  he  left  the  school  and  ceased  publicly  to 
lecture,  or  why  he  left  it,  are  questions  not  now  to  be  an- 
swered. The  fact  that  he  did  leave  it,  and  that  adverse 
forces  were  again  being  assembled  against  him,  are  the 
only  facts  which  clearly  appear ;  and  so  we  come  to  the 
Oouncil  of  Sens,  in  a.  d.  1140,  and  to  the  final  combat 
d  atUranee  between  himself  and  the  Abbot  of  Glairvaux. 
At  this  point,  then,  they  demand  our  careful  attention, 
and  some  things  are  to  be  clearly  borne  in  mind  that 
we  may  understand  their  relations  to  each  other. 

I  have  said  already  that  they  had  met  at  least  once 
before,  at  Morigni,  when  Innocent  Second  was  in 
France,  and  when  Bernard  was  his  devoted  attendant 
Once,  too,  at  a  later  time,  Ab^lard  had  addressed  a 
letter  to  Bernard,^  which  has  in  parts  of  it  an  ironical, 
and  perhaps  an  irritating  tone,  on  the  proper  transla- 
tion of  the  word  usually  rendered  ^^  daily  "  bread,  in  the 
Lord's  Prayer;  Ab^lard  contending  that  it  should  be 
translated  ^^  super-substantial "  bread,  as  in  the  Vulgate 
version  of  Matthew's  gospel,  and  as  he  himself  had 
directed  it  to  be  said  in  the  devotions  at  The  Paraclete. 
It  does  not  appear  that  Bernard  answered  this  letter,  or 

1  Epiat  ad  Divnin  Bernardum.  —  Opera  AbH.,  i  618-624. 


460  BBBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAVX: 

left  any  record  to  show  that  it  displeased  him,  thou^ 
it  may  have  served  to  quicken  and  confirm  any  feeling 
adverse  to  AMlard,  as  rash,  headstrong,  fond  of  novel- 
ties, which  had  before  been  lodged  in  his  mind.  Bat 
their  first  public  meeting,  at  any  rate,  was  at  this 
Council  of  Sens,  when  Ab^lard  was  already  sixty*one 
years  of  age  and  Bernard  f orty-nine,  and  when  the  coU 
lision  occurred  which  was  the  fruit  of  many  forces 
which  had  preceded. 

I  have  spoken  already  of  the  marked  differences  be- 
tween the  twp  men,  if  I  should  not  rather  say  tiieir 
essential  antagonism,  of  spirit,  of  teaching,  and  of 
practical  tendency.  The  differences  which  had  ap- 
peared even  thirty  years  before  had  only  been  devel- 
oped and  signalized  by  time.  To  Bernard  sanctity  of 
life  and  of  spirit  was  still  the  transcendent  good  of 
man, —  the  condition  of  Divine  Wisdom,  since  the  pure 
in  heart  are  th^ey  who  see  Gk>d,  the  conditi<m  of  useful- 
ness, of  blessedness,  and  of  hope;  the  element  of  ce- 
lestial experience.  In  those,  and  only  in  those,  who 
attained  it,  was  the  final  experience  which  had  become 
possible  through  Redemption  predicted  on  earth,  and 
perfected  in  heaven.  The  Church  doctrine  and  ritual 
were  sacred  to  him  because  he  believed  them  to  in- 
spire and  nurture  this  superlative  holiness.  The 
world  was  only  important  to  him  as  an  arena  for  tiie 
attainment  of  this,  which  brought  men  to  fellowship 
with  the  Most  High.  It  mattered  not  what  else  a  man 
had,  if  he  had  not  this  he  was  poor  for  eternity.  But 
if  he  had  this,  whether  statesman  or  serf  or  unknown 
monk,  his  place  was  with  the  sons  of  light  In  theory, 
Ab^lard  would  hardly  have  denied  this;  but  practi- 
cally, to  him,  a  free,  bold,  discursive  intellectual  activ- 
ity was  the  chief  good  of  higher  souls ;  mental  alertneeSi 


IN  HIS  CONTROVEBST  WITH  AB&ABD.  461 

and  a  varioas  acquirement^  were  the  goal  of  his  desire, 
— to  know  what  was  knowable,  to  reach  conclusions 
through  processes  of  argument  which  could  not  be 
answered,  and  to  stand  at  the  head  of  the  logical  and 
philosophical  movement  of  his  century. 

Bernard  was  profoundly  self -distrustful  before  Ood, 
though  never  timid  before  outward  danger,  or  shaken 
in  spirit  by  human  opposition.  It  was  the  very  diffi- 
dence and  humility  of  his  manner  at  ordinary  times 
which  gave  him  in  momentous  emergencies  his  tremen- 
dous impressiveness.  When  the  cause  of  righteous- 
ness and  of  truth,  as  he  saw  it^  was  imperilled  by 
assault^  his  spirit  flashed  into  sudden  flame  of  intensest 
purpose  which  amazed  men,  and  subdued  them,  with 
words  that  fell  like  shattering  bolts  out  of  the  bosom  of 
a  soft-moving  cloud.  His  overwhelming  energy  then 
startled  the  more  by  its  contrast  with  his  customary 
delicate  reserve.  Ab^lard,  on  the  other  hand,  was  irri- 
table, self-confident,  even  arrogant  and  haughty  in  his 
usual  tone,  disdainful  toward  adversaries,  and  ready  at 
any  time  to  challenge  controversy,  or  essay  any  difficult 
mental  enterprise.  He  loved  applause,  and  delighted 
in  praise.  He  only  half  lived  when  out  of  men's  sight, 
and  when  the  general  thought  and  speech  were  not  oc- 
cupied with  him.  He  was  gratified  when  he  excited 
fear.  The  contrast  in  appearance  between  the  two  was 
noticed  by  observers  at  the  Council  of  Sens.  Bernard 
entered  alone,  with  downcast  eyes,  serious  face,  in 
coarse  garments,  dispensing  benedictions  to  those  who 
sought  them.  Ab^lard  strode  in,  surrounded  by  his  dis- 
ciples, with  head  erect  and  a  proud  mien,  startling 
those  who  looked  on  his  worn  and  scornful  face.  ^    The 

1  Lonqn'il  vit  «ntr«r  dftiis  aes  mora  d'an  cdU  saint  Bernard  setil,  triste, 
mnffnsat,  1m  yenz  Iwui^  couyert  de  la  robe  gnmhn  de  GlurTaaz,  et  pr^ 


462  BSBNABD  OF  GLAIBTAUX. 

difference  corresponds  with  all  that  we  know  of  the 
character  of  the  men. 

Above  all,  to  Bernard  sensual  passion  was  the  object 
of  extremest  disdain  and  dread.  Even  in  his  most  sus- 
ceptible youth,  when  he  had  felt  an  improper  impulse 
suggested  by  the  sight  of  a  beautiful  woman,  he  had 
plunged  into  a  pool  of  ice-cold  water,  to  freeze  and 
drown  the  very  sensibility  to  such  a  suggestion.  ^  Any 
sensual  indulgence  was  to  him  as  the  lambent  fire  of 
hell,  shining  but  deadly,  piercing  the  soul  with  de- 
stroying flame,  enwrapping  it  in  doom;  while  the  sen- 
sual successes  and  calamities  of  Ab^lard,  at  the  height 
of  his  fame,  had  been  a  conspicuous  scandal  of  Chris- 
tendom. To  those  who  had  watched  his  subsequent 
career,  with  its  restless  agitations  and  passionate 
changes,  it  might  not  be  certain  that  his  temper  in  this 
respect  had  been  radically  changed  by  the  fierce  sor- 
rows through  which  he  had  passed. 

It  was  therefore  not  to  be  expected  that  the  two  men 
should  stand  in  close  and  harmonious  relations  with 
each  other.  There  are  cases  where  the  peculiarities  of 
one  man  so  fit  with  and  compensate  the  peculiarities  of 
another  that  their  union  is  more  intimate  because  of  their 
differences.  But  where  essential  moral  repellences 
continuously  appear,  the  nearer  men  approach,  the  more 
sharp  and  complete  their  antagonism  is.  Ab^lard  natu- 
rally thought  Bernard  fanatical  and  narrow ;  and  from 

c^^  d'nne  renomm^e  de  saintet^  menreUleose ;  de  Taiitra,  AbOsid*  qni, 
malgi^  son  ^  et  809  maiix,  portait  encore  avao  fierU  une  tfite  beUe  et  dA- 
tniite,  et  marchait  entomb  de  see  diadples  k  Taapect  qnelqae  pen  profiuie. 
Partout  oil  paseait  le  saiiit  AbW,  on  yoyait  lea  i^enoux  fl^hir»  lee  fronts 
8*incliner  eons  la  benediction  de  la  main  dont  on  raoontait  lea  miracles. 
Sur  les  pas  d'Ab^lard,  ceux  qu'attirait  la  cniiorite  itaient  presqn*i 
repoosses  par  reffroi.  —  Db  RticrsAT  :  Fie  d^AhUard,  L  p.  204. 
1  Vita,  i.  cap.  8 ;  Open,  voL  ii.  col.  2096. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYEBST  WITH   AB^LABD.  468 

his  point  of  view  he  judged  correctly.  Bernard  had  a 
profound  distrust  of  the  spirit  of  Ab^lard,  and  was  pre- 
pared to  believe,  perhaps  too  readily,  that  his  writings 
were  pernicious,  and  that  the  tendencies,  intellectual 
and  spiritual,  represented  in  him,  would  work  a  dreary 
decadence  in  the  Church.  It  must  be  remembered,  too, 
that  the  teachings  of  Ab^lard  were  often  exaggerated, 
perhaps  unconsciously  misrepresented,  by  the  zealous 
disciples  who  had  taken  from  him  a  strong  impulse  and 
a  definite  bent,  but  who  did  not  reproduce  his  careful  dis- 
criminations;  who  uttered  crudely  what  he  expressed 
finely,  and  in  whom  his  boldness  of  spirit  was  replaced 
by  an  irritating  swagger.  The  copies  of  his  books  be- 
ing necessarily  few,  and  hard  to  obtain,  it  was  inevita- 
ble that  the  general  Christian  thought  of  the  time 
should  take  its  impression  of  him  and  his  doctrine 
from  those  who  professed  to  have  received  his  thought 
from  his  own  lips,  and  who  were  certainly  his  ardent 
admirers.^  But,  beneath  all  this,  there  was  a  di£Fer- 
ence  between  his  doctrine  and  that  of  Bernard,  which 
may  well  have  appeared  to  the  latter  fimdamental  and 
threatening* 

Bernard  founded  his  theology,  as  I  have  said,  on  au- 
thority, of  the  Scriptures,  and  of  the  consenting  con- 

>  Ainri  qa'il  nnve  toojouTB,  on  s'en  prit  d'abord  anx  disciples  d'AU- 
laid.  Us  ^talent  prisomptnenx  et  insolents  :  on  les  accnsa  d'ezag^rer  la 
doctrine  de  lenr  maitre  ;  puis,  on  les  sonpfonna  de  la  riYiltt,  et  on  loi  en 
demanda  oompte. 

IMmnsat  adds  the  substance  of  a  kind  letter  to  Ab^lard  from  Walter  of 
Laon«  a  famous  professor  of  theology,  who  had  himself  tanght  at  St.  Gen- 
evi^re,  in  which  "  il  se  plaint  an  mattre  de  rontrecnidance  de  sea  ^\hm ;  il 
ne  pent  croire  qn'ils  disent  Trai  en  pr^tendant  qne  lenr  professenr  donne  la 
pleine  intelligence  de  la  nature  de  Dien,  et  ram^ne  k  nne  dart^  parfaite  le 
dogme  de  la  Trinity  .  .  •  11  le  prie  de  lui  ^rire  positivement  son  avis  sur 
qnalques  points  d^Ucats  de  th^logie;  etc.  —  VU  cCAUlard^  torn  L  pp. 
17»-180. 


464  BEBNABD    OF  CLAXBYAUZ : 

sciousness  of  the  Churcli  interpretii^  the  Scriptures^ 
with  the  inward  witness  of  spiritual  experience.  He 
was  a  reverent  and  an  affirmative  mystic  Ab^lard 
based  his  system  substantially  upon  reason,  and  the 
careful  philosophical  analysis  and  defence  of  what  the 
Scriptures  declare.  He  has  been  called,  not  improperly 
perhaps,  by  so  acute  and  dispassionate  a  critic  as  Cousin, 
^^the  father  of  modem  rationalism."^  In  his  position 
among  his  contemporaries,  and  in  something  of  his 
spirit,  B^musat  suggests  a  parallel  between  him  and 
Voltaire.  As  limited  by  B^musat  the  comparison  mi^y 
not  be  wholly  rejected,  though  in  their  opinions  the 
two  thus  named  together  stood  widely  apart ^  But  the 
world  of  religion,  as  represented  by  Bernard,  perhaps 
looked  with  hardly  less  fear  on  this  brilliant  innovator 
than  did  the  church  and  the  clergy  of  the  time  of  Vol- 
taire on  his  open  and  fierce  assaults. 

Faith,  which  to  Bernard  was  a  settled  spiritual  as- 
surance in  the  soul,  a  Divine  persuasion  wrought  by 
grace,  even  a  direct  prevision  of  the  truth,  to  Ab^lard 
was  a  mental  apprehension  of  the  more  probable  among 
competing  opinions.  He  had  abimdant  confidence  in 
the  ability  of  the  speculative  understanding,  without 
dependence  on  any  special  temper  of  desire  and  adora- 

1  On  pent  le  regarder  comme  le  p^re  du  ntionalisme  modeme. — 
Cousin  :  ffid.  OH.  de  la  PhiloB.,  p.  227.     Paris  ed,,  1887. 

*  Voltaire  seol,  peut-dtre,  et  sa  situation  dans  le  xyvu  sikle,  nous  don- 
neraient  qnelqn'  image  de  ce  que  le  xii«  pensait  d'AWlaid.  Ceux  mtees 
qni  le  bl&maient  on  ne  Tosaient  d^fendre,  I'appelaient  tm  pk%i4moph4  orf- 
mirqble,  un  nuMre  des  plus  eO^breB  dan$  la  science,  .  .  .  Un  toivain  da 
tem|s  emploie  ponr  Ini  ce  mot,  qn'U  invente  peui-^tre,  ce  titre  d*eapiit 
wniwrjei  qui  sembleaToir^tiprfcistoentretronv^ponr  Voltaire.  «  .  .  Ce 
ne  fut  ponrtant  pas  nn  grand  homme  ;  ce  ne  fnt  pas  rodme  nn  grand 
philosophe;  mais  nn  esprit  snp^rieur,  d'nne  snbtiliti  ingfoimse,  nn 
raisonneur  inrentif,  nn  critique  p^n^trant,  qui  comprenait  flt  exponit 
merreiUenaement  —  Vie  d^AbHard^  torn.  i.  pp.  27(^278. 


IN  HIS  C0NTR0VEB8T  WITH  ABtLASD.  465 

tion,  to  maintain  and  explain  whatever  should  be  re- 
ceived as  <the  truth.  Diligent  inquiry  was  enough  of 
itself  to  lead  men  to  a  substantive  faith.  He  valued 
and  encouraged  doubt,  as  the  condition  of  attaining,  hy 
larger  endeavor,  a  clearer  knowledge;  quoting  with 
approbation  the  saying  of  Aristotle  that  ^  it  is  not  easy 
to  assert  a  thing  with  confidence  unless  one  has  repeat- 
edly examined  the  matter,  and  that  therefore  it  is  not 
without  advantage  to  have  doubted  of  everything. '^ 
"  For  doubt, "  Ab^lard  adds,  "  leads  to  inquiry,  and  by 
inquiry  we  arrive  at  truth ;  as  the  very  Truth  Himself 
has  said,  ^  Seek,  and  ye  shall  find. '  '*  ^^  The  Lord, "  he 
further  says,  ^^when,  at  the  age  of  twelve  years,  in- 
stead of  teaching  he  sate  in  the  Temple  and  asked  ques- 
tions, would  teach  us  by  His  example  that  we  are  also 
to  learn  by  questioning. "  ^  It  is  evident  at  a  glance 
how  sharply  such  maxims,  especially  as  seeking  a  sup- 
port in  the  instruction  and  example  of  the  Master, 
would  clash  with  Bernard's  conception  of  faith,  as  a 
grace  divinely  infused,  spiritual  in  nature,  decisive  in 
affirmation,  and  sovereign  in  regency  over  thought  as 
over  life.  It  is  unquestionably  true  of  Ab^lard,  as 
Neander  has  sharply  pointed  out,  that  ^^his  theology 
took  schism  and  doubt  for  its  point  of  departure,  and 
could  never  wholly  repudiate  its  origin. "  ^    The  union 

I  Hm)  qnippe  prima  n^ntUD  clayis  definitur ;  aaddua  aoilicat  aea 
freqnens  intenogatio ;  ad  qnam  qoidem  toto  dadderio  arripiendam  phi- 
losophas  ille  omnium  penpicacusimua  Aristoteles  in  pnBdicamento  ad 
aliquid,  stndioeos  adhonatur.  .  .  .  Dnbitando,  enim  ad  inqnisitlonem 
▼doimiu ;  inqnirendo  reritatam  percipimua  ;  joxta  quod  et  Veritas  "^wa  : 
Qacrit\  inquit,  et  inrenietia,  palaate  et  aperietor  robia.  Qa»  nos  ^am 
proprio  ezamplo  moraliter  iustroens,  dfca  daodecimum  ntatis  aiinnm 
iedena  et  interrogana  in  medio  doetoram  invteniri  roluit,  ei  uq,  —  Oworagm 
InidiU,  Sio  et  Non,  p.  16. 

*  Hiat  of  Clirift  Belig.  and  Chnrch,  ir.  880. 

80. 


466  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX :     ^ 

of  feeling  with  experience,  responding  to  rhe  declara* 
tions  of  Scripture,  and  supplying  the  absol  ute  inward 
certitude  concerning  things  unseen  which  naturally 
surpassed  all  vigor  of  opinion  and  was  not  subject  to 
its  decays,  which  in  the  common  acceptation  of  tiie 
mystics  was  the  foundation  of  holy  hope,  and  of  heayenly 
wisdom — this  was  practically  supplanted  in  the  scheme 
of  Ab^lard  by  a  fairly  formulated  intellectual  convic- 
tion, succeeding  the  restless  oscillations  of  doubt^  and 
supporting  itself  on  careful  and  valid  human  a^ument 
He  did  not  hold  very  clearly  or  fully  to  any  special 
Divine  inspiration  in  evangelists  and  apostles,  or  of 
course  in  the  ancient  prophets,  —  to  any  inspiration 
which  set  them  apart,  for  example,  from  the  Church 
Fathers,  or  even  from  the  higher  class  of  heathen  phi- 
losophers. He  conceived  that  what  was  taught  in  the 
New  Testament  concerning  faith,  hope,  charity,  witii 
the  sacraments,  was  enough  for  salvation;  that  other 
things  had  been  added,  by  both  the  Apostles  and  the 
Fathers,  for  amplification  and  ornament;  ^  and  that  both 
apostles  and  prophets  had  been  by  no  means  free  from 
error.  As  to  the  Fathers,  whom  the  Church  of  that 
day  unduly  venerated,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that 
they  had  erred  in  many  things,  though  he  was  ready  to 
admit  that  they  had  not  intentionally  falsified  in  such 
things,  but  had  fallen  into  sins  of  ignorance,  or  had 
purposed,  in  the  impulse  of  charity,  to  subserve  more 
fully  than  exact  truth  would  warrant  the  interest  of 

1  Saffioere  aatem  salati  fortaaae  potermnt  et  qiUB  Eyangeliiim  de  fids  «l 
■pe  eft  charitate  sea  sacramentis  tradiderat,  rtiamsi  Apoatolioa  non  addantnr 
institata,  neqae  aliqua  sanctornm  Patram  diseiplintt  vel  diapenaationes,  at 
aant  canones,  etc  .  .  .  Volait  tamen  Dominna  et  ab  apoatolia  et  a  Maetia 
Patribna  qiUBdam  anperaddi  pneoepta  rel  diapenaationea,  qvibua  admnetur 
Tal  amplificatar  Eocleaia,  rel  at  civitas  aua,  rel  ipaa  eiviam  aaaroin  tatioa 
moniator  inoolnmitaa.  —  Opera,  ProL  in  Epiat  ad  Bom.  ii.  IM. 


IN   HIS  CONTROyEEST  WITH   ABOARD.  467 

others.^  He  practically  exalted  the  heathen  philogo- 
phers  aboTe  the  Church  Fathers,  maintaining  that  in 
life  and  doctrine  they  had  reached  in  effect  Apostolical 
perfection,  were  far  above  the  Jews,  and  were  but  little 
removed,  if  at  all,  from  the  religion  of  Christ  The 
morality  of  the  Gospel  had  been  only  a  reformation  of 
the  law  of  nature,  which  these  philosophers  had  found 
out  and  followed;'  and  with  scornful  severity  he  set 
beside  them  the  bishops  and  Christian  teachers  of  his 
time,  who  filled  their  houses  with  jesters,  dancers, 
singers  of  obscene  songs,  devoting  to  these  the  alms 
given  by  the  poor ;  who  indeed  introduced  a  scenic  base- 

^  Conitot  vero  at  prophetas  ipsos  quandoque  prophetuB  gratia  caruiaae, 
et  nonnolla  ex  obeq  propfaetandi,  cam  ae  spiritum  prophetisB  habere  crederent, 
per  apiritom  aanm  falaa  protoliaae ;  et  hoc  eia  ad  humilitatia  caatodiam 
permiflaom  eaae,  et  uq.  .  .  .  Quid  itaqne  miruni,  cum  ipaoa  etiam  prophetaa 
et  apoatoloe  ab  errore  non  penitaa  fuiaae  constat  alienoa,  ai  in  tarn  multi- 
plid  aanctonim  patnim  acriptura  nonnulla  propter  auprapoaitam  canaam 
erronee  piolata  aea  acripta  yideantar  f  Bed  nee  tamquam  mendadi  reoa 
aigoi  aanctoe  oonrenit,  ai  nonnuUa  qnandoqae  aliter  quam  ae  rei  yeritaa 
habeaty  arbitrantea,  non  per  dnplicitatem,  aed  per  ignorantiam  dicant ;  nee 
pnesomptioni  rel  peccato  imputandum  est  quidqnid  ex  caritate  ad  ali- 
qoam  edificatioBem  dicitur,  cam  apud  dominam  omnia  discuti  joxta 
intentionem  constet.  —  Ouvrages  IrUd.,  ProL  in  Sic  et  Non,  p.  11. 

*  Qnod  ai  poat  fidem  ac  moralem  doctrinam  philosophorum  fiuemque 
sea  intentionem  recte  yivendi  ab  eis  asaignatum,  yitam  qnoqne  ipaomm 
inapiciamna,  et  qnam  diligenter  reipublica  atatam  institaerint,  atqae  ipao- 
mm civinm  aimulqae  conviventiam  vitam  ordinayerint,  reperiemna  ipaomm 
tam  yitam,  qaam  doctrinam  maxima  eyangelicam  aea  apoatolicam  perfec- 
tionem  exprimere,  et  a  religione  Christiana  eos  nihil  ant  param  recedere, 
qnod  nobia  tam  rationibua  moram,  quam  nomine  ipao  juncti  reperiuntur  ; 
nomine  quidem,  cum  noa  a  yera  aophia,  hoc  eat  aapientia  Dei  Patria,  qusa 
Chriatna  eat.  ...  Si  enim  diligenter  moralia  eyangelii  pnecepta  consider- 
•moa,  nihil  ea  aliud  quam  reformationem  legia  naturalis  inyeniemus,  quam 
aecatoe  esse  philoaophoa  constat.  .  .  .  Undo  cum  tanta,  nt  dictum  est, 
eyangelica  ac  philoaophicie  doctrine  concordia  pateat,  nonnulli  Platoni- 
oomm,  in  tantam  prompenmt  blaspheroiam,  ut  Domtnum  Jesum  omnea 
•naa  lantentiaa  a  Platone  accepiaae  dicerent.  —  TheoL  Christ.,  lib.  ii  ; 
Opera,  ti  414. 


468  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

ness  into  the  Church  of  Gk>d,  while  Plato  in  his  auster- 
ity had  banished  even  poets  from  the  Republic.^  He 
declared  the  ancient  philosophical  virtue  to  be  in  this 
true  and  superior,  that  it  did  not  regard  earthly  advan- 
tage or  loss  as  that  of  the  Jews  did,  or  even  future  re- 
wards and  punishments,  but  wbs  inspired  by  that  love 
of  good  which  belongs  to  the  divinely  constituted  na^ 
ture  of  man;  and  he  seems  not  to  have  doubted  that 
God  had  recognized  and  recompensed  this  virtue  of  the 
heathen  by  sometimes  bestowing  upon  them  the  power 
of  miracles,  as  in  the  instance,  which  he  cites,  of  the 
Emperor  Vespasian.^  He  believed  that  God  had  also 
communicated  to  them  the  higher  knowledge  of  Himself 
which  they  had  allegorically  taught ;  and  that  their  so- 
called  Soul  of  the  World  was  in  fact  nothing  else  than 
the  Holy  Ghost  of  the  New  Testament  * 

1  Quid  ergo  episcopi  et  religionis  Christiane  doctores  poetas  s  dvitate 
Dei  non  arcent,  quos  a  civitate  sieculi  Plato  inhibuit  ?  Immo  quid  iu 
Bolemnibus  magDanim  festivitatum  diebus,  quse  penitus  in  landibus  Dei 
expend!  debent,  joculatores,  saltatores,  incantatores,  cantatores  turpium 
acciunt  ad  inensam,  totam  diem  et  noctem  cum  iUis  feriant,  atque  aabbati- 
zant,  magnia  postmodum  eos  remunerant  pnemiis,  que  de  eccleaiaaticia 
rapiant  beneficiis,  de  oblationibus  pauperum,  ut  immolent  certe  demoniis  I 
.  .  .  Parum  fortassis  et  hoc  diabolus  reputat  quod  extra  sacra  loca  bttri- 
licarum  genint,  nisi  etiam  scenicas  turpitudines  in  ecclesiara  Dei  introducat. 

—  Theol,  Chnst.,  lib.  ii.  ;  Opera,  IL  445-446. 

^  Non  secundum  servitutem  Judaicam,  ex  timore  poenarum  et  ambi- 
tione  terrenorum,  non  ex  deaiderio  aBtemomm,  nobis  plnrimum  philosopbos 
certum  est  assentire  ;  quibus,  ut  diximus,  et  fides  Trinitatis  reyelata  esit, 
et  ab  ipsis  pnedicata,  et  apes  immortaluB  anime  et  stemss  retributionis 
expectata,  pro  qua  mundum  penitus  contemnere,  et  terrenis  omnibus 
abrenuntiare,  et  seipsos  dura  macerare  inedia  non  dubitaverunt,  ponentea 
nobiscum  amorem  Dei  finem  et  causara  omnium.  «  .  .  De  ctgos  etiam 
patre  Vespasiano  quam  mirabile  sit  illud  quod  in  eodem  Suetonius  pn»- 
mittit,  et  qoam  accepta  Deo  opera  ejus  ipsa  miraculorum  dona  testentor, 
qnis  non  intelligat  ? —  Th£oL  Chinst,,  lib.  ii.  ;  Opera,  ii.  414,  438. 

*  Nunc  autem  ilia  Platouia  verba  de  anima  round!  diligenter  diaeutia* 
mus,  ut  in  eis  Spirituni  sanctum  integerrime  designatnm  ease  agnoaeamaa. 

—  Ibid,  ii.  879. 


IN   HIS  CONTROVERST  WITH   ABl^LARD.  469 

In  sharp  contrast  with  his  frequent  and  eloquent 
eulogiums  on  the  heathen  philosophers,  Ab^lard  com- 
piled a  collection  of  the  sayings  of  the  venerated  Church 
Fathers  on  various  subjects  of  faith  and  morals,  ar- 
ranging them  under  more  than  a  hundred  and  fifty 
heads,  and  giving  to  the  collection  the  striking  title  of 
**  Sic  et  Non, "  or  "  So,  and  Not  so ; "  and  thus  he  again 
gave  immense  offence  to  the  common  religioxis  thought 
of  his  time.  It  seems  to  have  been  a  work  intended 
for  controversial  purposes,  as  B^musat  suggests,  rather 
than  for  the  direct  encouragement  of  a  sceptical  spirit ;  ^ 
yet  it  must  have  had  a  decided  influence  in  the  lat- 
ter direction.  The  sayings  of  the  Fathers  were  pre- 
sented in  direct,  and  often  in  flagrant  contradiction  to 
one  another;  and  the  lesson  deduced  was,  in  substance, 
^  Thus  you  see  how  absurd  it  is  for  one  man  to  set  him- 
self up  as  the  judge  of  another!  In  all  these  things 
leave  Him  to  judge  who  alone  knoweth  all  things,  and 
who  can  read  the  thoughts  of  men. "  It  was  his  ingen- 
ious and  elaborate  way  of  either  forestalling  attacks 
upon  himself,  or  of  making  to  such  his  primary  an- 
swer. It  was  a  fair  method  of  controversy,  and  the 
extracts  cited  by  him  show  diligent  reading,  with  a 
memory  of  remarkable  exactness  and  range. 

But  now  the  question  which  concerns  us  is,  not,  How 
far  are  we  in  accord  with  the  views  of  Ab^lard,  or  with 
the  general  trend  of  his  discussion  ?  but,  How  did  it  look 
to  the  eyes  of  Bernard, — himself  the  last  of  the  Christian 
Fathers ;  who  was  not  trying  to  find  his  way,  by  means 
of  doubt,  out  of  denial,  into  a  more  or  less  confident 
conclusion,  but  to  whom  the  majestic  and  tender  Chris- 

>  On  86  trompenit  cependsnt,  si  Ton  ycherchaitnn  recuefl  d'antanomies 
destin^  k  ^tablir  1e  doate  en  mati^re  de  religion  :  c'est  nn  ouvnge  con* 
atieri  k  la  oontroyene  plat6t  qa'aa  ecepticisme.  —  Vie  tFAbHard^  L  l$9. 


470  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

tian  Faith  was  as  certain  as  life,  and  almost  as  directly 
affirmed  by  conciousness,  and  who  longed  to  have  that 
holy  Faith,  on  which  his  entire  experience  and  hope 
securely  rested,  become  universal  ?  to  him  who  found 
in  thafc  Faith  the  radiant  and  inestimable  bond,  woven 
at  once  of  miracle  and  of  sacrifice,  by  which  the  Al- 
mighty was  to  draw  back  the  world  to  His  fellowship 
and  His  face  ?  We  are  not  left  in  doubt  as  to  the  an- 
swer. ^'He  lifts  his  head  to  heaven,"  he  says  of 
Ab^lard,  *^  examines  the  lofty  things  of  Grod,  and  re- 
turns to  report  to  us  the  ine£Fable  words  which  it  were 
not  lawful  for  a  man  to  utter ;  and  while  he  is  ready  to 
render  a  reason  for  all  things,  even  for  those  which  are 
above  reason,  he  is  presuming  against  both  reason  and 
faith ;  since  what  can  be  more  contrary  to  reason  than 
to  undertake  to  transcend  it  by  itself  ?  and  what  more 
contrary  to  faith  than  to  be  unwilling  to  believe  what 
we  cannot  by  reason  attain  ?  "  ^  ^^  At  the  very  outset  of 
his  theology,  or  fool-ology  [vel  potius  Stultilogisdj  "  he 
says,  ^  Ab^lard  defines  faith  as  opinion,  an  estimate  of 
truth.  As  if  one  were  at  liberty  to  think  and  to  say 
whatever  he  pleases  about  matters  of  faith;  as  if  the 
sacraments  of  our  faith  were  suspended  uncertainly,  on 
vague  and  various  human  opinions,  and  were  not  rather 
established  on  certain  truth.  If  faith  wavers,  is  not  our 
hope  also  an  empty  one  ?  Then  were  our  martyrs  fool- 
ish, sustaining  such  tortures  for  things  uncertain;  not 
hesitating  to  pass  through  a  painful  death,  into  eternal 
exile,  for  a  doubtful  reward!  Far  be  it  from  us  to 
think,  as  this  man  does,  that  anytiiing  in  our  faith  or 

^  Quid  enim  magis  contra  Tationem,  quam  rttione  Tationem  eonari 
tranacendere  f  St  quid  magis  contra  fidem,  qnam  credere  nolle,  quidqoid 
noB  poent  latione  attingere  ?  —  Opera^  epkt.  ad  Innocent.  IL  toI.  i.  col. 
X448. 


IN  HIS  CONTROVERST  WITH  AB]£lABD.  471 

hope  is  left  suspended  on  a  doubtful  opinion,  and  is  not 
rather  founded  altogether  on  the  certain  and  solid 
truth,  Divinely  attested  by  oracles  and  miracles,  estab- 
lished and  consecrated  by  the  child-birth  of  the  Virgin, 
by  the  blood  of  the  Redeemer,  by  the  splendor  of  His 
Resurrection.  These  testimonies  are  too  credible  for 
doubt.  But  if  even  they  were  at  all  less  certain,  the 
Spirit  Himself  beareth  witness  with  our  spirit  that  we 
are  the  sons  of  God.  How,  then,  can  any  one  dare  to 
say  that  faith  is  opinion ;  unless  he  is  one  who  has  not 
yet  received  the  Spirit,  or  who  ignores  the  Gospel,  or 
thinks  it  a  fable?  .  .  .  There  are  opinions  enough 
among  these  logicians,  whose  business  it  is  to  doubt  all 
things,  and  know  nothing.  Faith  is  the  substance  of 
things  hoped  for,  not  the  fantasy  of  empty  conjectures. 
Observe  that  word  ^  substance. '  It  is  not  lawful  to  think 
or  dispute  as  one  pleases  about  the  Faith,  nor  to  wan- 
der hither  and  thither  amid  the  foolishness  of  opinions, 
or  in  the  devious  ways  of  error.  By  that  word  ^sub- 
stance '  something  sure  and  established  is  set  before  you ; 
you  are  enclosed  within  certain  boundaries,  restrained 
within  fixed  limits.  For  faith  is  not  an  opinion ;  it  is 
a  certitude."^ 

Whether  Bernard  in  writing  these  sentences  con- 
ceived and  represented  with  entire  correctness  the  posi- 
tion of  his  opponent,  is  not,  I  think,  certain.  That  he 
was  wholly  sincere  in  writing  them  I  have  no  question. 
In  antagonism,  therefore,  not  of  spirit  alone,  but  of  the 
prime  principles  of  his  ethical  and  doctrinal  system, 
he  felt  himself  compelled  to  stand  toward  the  innovat- 
ing Breton ;  and  yet  more  distinctly,  if  that  were  pos- 
sible, on  particular  points  of  philosophy  or  theology 
which  to  both  were  important     I  cannot  of  course  set 

^  Opfti»»  Tnet.  Cod.  Error.  AML  [epist  ad  Iiino.l  voL  L  eoU.  Ii49-(K>. 


472  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

these  fully  before  you,  but  some  of  them  may  be  indi- 
cated,—  enough,  perhaps,  to  show  how  it  was  that 
Bernard  was  at  last  pushed,  reluctantly,  but  with  char- 
acteristic energy  and  fervor,  to  face  Ab^lard,  and  force 
his  public  condemnation. 

Philosophically,  the  di£Ference8  between  them  were 
actual  and  wide,  though  it  does  not  appear  that  the 
mind  of  Bernard  was  sharply  or  painfully  impressed  by 
these  until  they  emerged  in  theological  divergence.  It 
would  be  wholly  unjust  to  him  to  say  that  he  was  averse 
to  all  philosophizing  on  the  truth  of  Religion.  He  did 
not  quarrel  with  it  in  the  least  as  illustrated  in  An- 
selm,  who  as  a  reasoner  had  been  as  active  as  Ab^lard, 
while  more  acute,  and  far  more  profound.  In  fact^ 
Bernard,  like  all  the  mystics,  had  his  own  philosophy 
of  sacred  things,  by  which  he  adjusted  their  mysteries 
to  his  mind,  and  set  their  elements  in  a  certain  intel- 
lectual harmony  with  each  other.  It  was  a  philosophy 
which  founded  itself  on  intimate  facts  in  tiie  experi- 
ence of  devout  souls ;  which  gave  the  highest  place  in 
thought  to  the  spiritual  intuition  of  Gh)d;  and  which 
recognized  the  essential  greatness  of  man,  not  in  any 
capacity  to  find  (rod  for  himself,  but  in  the  capacity  to 
receive  from  Grod  instruction  and  grace  for  the  vision 
and  peace  of  the  soul.  His  science  of  Divine  things 
was  a  vital  one,  though  he  would  by  no  means  have 
given  it  that  name,  and  though  his  spirit  was  so  emi- 
nently practical  and  so  earnestly  devout  that  dialectical 
exercise  had  for  him  little  attraction. 

But  Bernard  was  a  realist,  as  Augustine  had  been, 
who  had  taken  the  doctrine  from  Plato,  and  had  handed 
it  on  to  those  upon  whom  his  influence  came.  And  the 
doctrine  is  familiar,  or  is  easily  apprehended.  Accord- 
ing to  it,  the  essence  of  things  is  that  in  them  which  is 


IN  HIB  OONTBOVEBST  WITH   AB^LARD.  478 

pennanent  and  distinctiye.  These  essences  are  the 
archetjpal  Divine  Ideas,  and  they  constitate  the  whole 
of  real  Being,  all  things  which  exist  having  reality  as 
partaking  in  them,  and  things  objective  being  their 
partial,  imperfect  copies.  The  idea  —  as  of  color,  tree, 
cloud,  man  —  is  the  persistent  and  invariable  element, 
forming  the  basis  of  the  sensible  mutable  phenomena. 
The  Universe  itself  is  only  the  outward  formal  expres- 
sion of  these  ideas,  and  of  Him  in  whom  they  eternally 
exist  In  apprehending  them,  through  the  impression 
made  on  the  senses  which  give  token  of  them,  man,  as 
a  cognizant  spirit,  becomes  in  his  measure  assimilated 
to  them,  and  at  last  finds  (Jod,  who  is  the  supreme  ob- 
ject of  science. 

The  universals  have  thus  an  independent  existence, 
apart  from  individual  objects  which  they  precede. 
^Universalia  ante  rem,"  is  the  motto  of  the  scheme. 
Or,  as  modified  by  Aristotle,  according  to  whom  the 
universals,  though  real,  exist  only  in  individuals 
which  the  species  precedes,  ^^  Uni versalia  in  re, ''  is  the 
proper  maxim.  General  terms  are  not  arbitrary  signs, 
but  the  names  of  these  archetypal  ideas,  representing 
the  inmost  essences  of  things.  Virtue  is  a  reality,  not 
a  name.  The  triangle  exists,  independently  of  any 
delineation ;  and  man  is  man  simply  because  the  gene- 
ric humanity  is  set  forth  in  him.  Justice,  Veracity, 
Benevolence,  are  not  collective  terms  to  describe  cer- 
tain qualities,  but  vital  essences,  eternal  as  Grod.  This 
was  the  general  speculative  scheme  which  had  attracted 
reflective  and  systematizing  minds  for  many  genera- 
tions, and  which  commonly  prevailed  in  the  time  of 
Bernard.  Its  poetical  and  reverent  quality,  its  apparent 
combination  of  grandeur  with  simplicity,  would  natu- 
rally commend  it  to  minds  like  his,  while  its  seem- 


474  BBBNABD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

inglj  anxiliarj  relation  to  certain  great  doctrines  which 
he  held,  as  of  Original  Sin,  of  Redemption  by  Christ, 
even  of  the  constitution  of  the  Church,  could  hardly 
fail  to  give  it  in  his  eyes  a  radical  and  momentous  sig- 
nificance. Humanity  to  him  was  a  universal  essence, 
present  in  all  men,  and  constituting  the  vital  reality  of 
their  being.  It  was  this  which  had  sinned  and  suffered 
in  the  FalL  It  was  tiiis  which  Christ  had  assumed  in 
Incarnation,  and  on  which  His  Redemption  had  taken 
effect  It  was  this  Humanity,  essentially  purified  and 
exalted,  which  made  the  Church  lovely  and  mighty,  and 
which  at  last,  filling  the  earth,  was  to  realize  the  vision 
of  ancient  seers.     This  was  his  view  of  things. 

But  early  in  the  twelfth  century  a  contrary  philo* 
sophical  doctrine  began  to  be  taught,  not  for  the  first 
time,  but  more  earnestly  and  widely  than  before,  ac- 
cording to  which,  as  taught  for  example  by  Roscellinua, 
only  individual  things  have  real  existence,  and  what 
are  called  universals  are  but  convenient  comprehensive 
names  by  which  to  describe  classes  of  things.  They 
are  mental  abstractions,  not  veritable  essences ;  helps 
to  the  understanding,  but  having  no  independent  exist- 
ence. In  a  word,  they  are  ^Nomina,  non  res,"  from 
whence  the  term  ^  Nominalism  "  has  come  to  describe 
this  mode  and  school  of  thought  Roscellinus,  as  I 
have  said,  did  not  hesitate  to  apply  his  favorite  theory 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  Divine  Trinity,  and  to  maintain 
that  as  only  individuals  exist,  the  three  persons  of  the 
Godhead  are  three  separate  subsistences,  morally  united, 
whom  only  custom  and  prejudice  prevent  men  from  so 
describing.^    He  was  compelled  to  retract  this  by  the 

1  Ab^lard'f  account  of  it  in :  "  Alter  qaoqne  totidem  enroiibns  ihto- 
Intoii  trtt  in  Doo  pioprietatesi  seciuidiiin  quas  trta  dlstingaimtiir  penouB^ 


IN  HIS  CONTBOVEBST  WITH   AB^LARD.  475 

council  of  SoissoiiB,  but  he  still  held  and  taught  the 
philosophical  doctrine  from  which  his  conclusion  had 
been  derived ;  and  Ab^lard  in  part,  though  with  impor- 
tant modifications,  followed  him  in  it 

This  eager  thinker  and  confident  logician  had  never 
held  himself  concluded  by  the  authority  of  Augustine, 
even  on  matters  of  religious  doctrine.  ^^No  matter 
what  Augustine  says, "  he  says  in  e£Fect,  in  treating  of 
the  nature  of  Christ,  ^^we  affirm  that  as  the  Lord  as« 
sumed  a  true  human  nature  he  took  with  it  all  the  real 
defects  of  human  infirmity.  ^'  ^  He  did  not  hesitate  to 
balance  his  mind  against  that  of  the  great  Numidian, 
even  on  a  point  like  this ;  and  certainly  on  a  question 
of  philosophy  he  would  only  accept  his  own  acute  affir- 
mative  thought.  He  honored  Aristotle,  though  he 
knew  but  a  small  part  of  his  writings,  and  these  not  of 
the  first  importance.  It  was  after  his  time  that  the 
Stagirite  came  to  be  familiarly  studied.  He  knew  Plato 
only  through  quotations  of  others,  as  of  Cicero,  Au- 
gustine, Boethius.  But  he  was  not  wholly  at  one  with 
Boscellinus  in  philosophical  thought,  aify  more  than 
with  the  realists.  He  agreed  with  him  that  in  indi- 
viduals alone  is  essential  being ;  but  he  maintained  at 
the  same  time  that  what  are  called  universals  have  a 


tns  atsentits  diTersM  ab  ipcu  penonis  et  sb  ipsa  divinitfttis  natoim  eon- 
•titoit,"  eial.^  Opera,  Introd.  ad  Theol.,  ii.  84. 

A  letter  of  Anselm  of  Canterbary  girea  the  aame  aoooant :  "  Aadio^ 
qiiod  tamen  absque  dubietate  credere  non  poaBum,  quia  BoaoeUinoa 
dericoa  didt  in  Deo  trea  personas  esse  tree  res  ab  invicem  separataa, 
aieot  sunt  tree  angeli,  et  trea  Deoa  rere  poeee  dici  ei  nana  admitteret*' 
BoaoeUiniu  bad  eren  claimed  that  Ijinfrane  before*  and  Anaelm  then, 
were  of  the  same  opinion.    See  Opera  Ab^l.,  i.  51,  note. 

1  Bed  dicat  Angnatinna  rolantatem  anam,  noa  rero  dicimna,  qnla,  aiont 
▼eram  hnmanitatem  aeanmait,  ita  hnmane  infirmitatta  reroe  defectna  haba- 
•rit  ~  Opera,  Epit  TheoL  Chriet,  torn.  iL  p.  678. 


476  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

real  existence,  thoagh  only  in  the  knowledge  of  Qod^ 
and  in  reBponsive  conceptions  of  the  human  mind.  In 
this  he  agreed  with  that  form  of  the  modem  philosophy 
which  affirms  that  the  cognitive  faculty  in  man  does 
not  act  through  the  senses  alone,  or  through  the  imagi- 
nation; that  man  has  an  essential  faculty  of  pure 
thought,  by  which  he  forms  and  must  form  general 
ideas,  —  wnich  are  not  mere  articulated  breath,  nor  on 
the  other  hand  independent  substantive  entities;  which 
are  existing  and  necessary  intellectual  concepts,  appre- 
hending general  attributes  and  relations.  To  this  form 
of  philosophy  the  name  Gonceptualism  is  commonly 
applied.  It  approaches  Nominalism,  no  doubt,'  more 
nearly  than  Realism,  but  it  differs  from  both ;  and  in 
his  relation  to  it  Ab^lard  deserves,  if  at  all,  the  eulo- 
gies which  Cousin  has  pronounced  upon  him  in  his 
relation  to  medieval  philosophy.^  Through  this  he 
stands  in  most  direct  touch  with  reflective  minds,  con- 
sidering man  in  his  mental  relation  to  the  order  of  the 
universe,  in  modern  time. 

Of  course  this  differed  from  Bernard's  philosophy, 
but  I  do  not  imagine  that  on  this  account  alone  the 
abbot  of  Clairvaux  and  the  practised  dialectician  would 
ever  have  come  into  personal  encounter.  Bernard 
would,  very  likely,  have  dreaded  and  deplored  the  self- 
asserting  logical  tendency  which  in  his  view  must  limit 

1  Ab^lard  embnssa  les  diflKreots  points  de  rne  da  m  deTBnden  «t  ka 
agrandit  encore.  ...  La  aolntion  qu'il  en  a  donn^  ilevie  k  sa  formnk  la 
plna  g^n6rale«  a  pe9u  un  nom  qui  t^moigne  aaaes  de  eon  caract^re  eaeentiel, 
nn  nom  peycbologiqne  et  dialectiqne  en  qnelque  sorte,  le  conceptaaKame. 
.  . .  Ab^lard  r&nme  cette  poUmiqne  et  coaronne  oette  ^poqne.  —  (hevrofm 
IrUd,,  Introd.,  pp.  clxxviii.,  cciii. 

Ab^lard  eat  le  principal  antear  de  cette  introdnction  [de  la  dialediqiM 
dans  la  th^logie] ;  il  est  done  le  principal  fondateor  de  la  philoaophie  dn 
moyen  Ige.  — Ibid,,  p.  ir. 


IN  HIS  GONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB^LARD.  477 

the  culture  of  piety,  and  over  which  the  consent  of  the 
past  exerted  no  practical  control.  But,  with  his  mind 
constantly  occupied  in  different  directions,  he  would 
hardly  have  become  deeply  engaged  in  these  contests 
within  the  schools,  or  have  taken  in  them  an  absorbing 
interest.  It  was  only  when  Ab^lard  essayed  to  touch 
with  the  daring  spear-point  of  his  dialectic  the  mysteries 
of  the  Faith  that  Bernard's  antagonism  was  energetically 
aroused.  Of  Ab^lard's  treatment  of  these,  Michelet, 
by  no  means  a  bigoted  theologian,  says  bluntly ;  ^'  The 
bold  young  man  simplified,  explained,  humanized  every- 
thing. He  suffered  scarcely  anything  of  the  hidden 
and  the  Divine  to  remain  in  the  most  commanding 
mysteries.  It  seemed  as  if  the  Church  till  that  time 
had  been  stanmiering,  while  Ab^lard  spoke  out.  All 
became  smooth  and  easy ;  he  treated  religion  politely, 
he  handled  her  gently,  but  she  melted  away  under  his 
hands.  Nothing  embarrassed  this  brilliant  talker ;  he 
reduced  religion  to  philosophy,  morality  to  humanity. 

*  Grime  is  not  in  the  act, '  he  says,  ^  but  in  the  inten- 
tion. '    Thus  there  are  no  sins  of  ignorance  or  of  habit. 

*  Those  even  who  crucified  the  Lord,  without  knowing 
that  he  was  the  Saviour,  did  not  sin.'  What  then  is 
original  sin  ?  ^  Le&s  a  sin  than  a  punishment, '  he  de- 
clares. But  why  then  the  Redemption  by  the  Passion, 
if  there  had  been  no  sin  ?  '  It  was  an  act  of  pure  love. 
God  wished  to  substitute  the  law  of  love  for  that  of 
fear. '  Thus  man  was  no  longer  blameworthy,  the  flesh 
was  justified,  rehabilitated ;  all  the  sufferings  by  which 
men  had  immolated  themselves  had  been  superfluous. 
What  became  of  so  many  voluntary  martyrs,  so  many 
fasts  and  macerations,  of  the  vigils  of  monks,  the  tribu- 
lations of  hermits,  of  all  the  tears  poured  out  toward 
Gk>d?    Vanity,  delusion!     God  was  an  amiable  and 


478  BERNARD  OF  GLAIRYAUX  : 

easy  God,  who  had  nothing  to  do  with  anything  of  that 
sort "  1 

I  do  not  affirm  that  this  vigorous  smnmary  by  the 
historian  of  the  opinions  of  Ab^lard,  with  the  trend  of 
those  opinions,  may  not  need  to  be  somewhat  shaded  or 
limited,  but  that  it  fairly  represents  the  impression  left 
by  the  fascinating  lecturer  on  the  thought  of  his  time 
seems  to  me  beyond  question ;  and  that  the  particular 
propositions  cited  are  to  be  found  in  his  writings  is 
demonstrably  certain.  That  he  located  the  moral 
character  of  an  action  in  the  intention  with  which  it  is 
done  is  abundantly  evident  from  the  ^^Scito  teipsum,'* 
and  from  other  of  his  writings.'  He  considered  the 
opposition  between  reason  and  the  suggestions  of  senae 
to  be  one  which  belonged  to  the  human  organization, 
and  the  following  conflict  to  be  a  condition  of  true  vir- 

1  Hist  de  France,  ton),  ii.  pp.  28S-286.    Paris  ed.,  1886. 

'  "  Desiderinin  ille  repriniit,  non  extingnit ;  sed  quia  non  trabitnr  ad 
consensum,  non  incurrit  peccatnm.  .  .  .  Kon  enim  qa«  fiant,  sed  quo 
animo  fiant,  pensat  Deus ;  nee  in  opere  sed  in  intentione  meritom  operan- 
tis,  vel  lauB  consistit.  ...  *  Habe/  inqnit  Augrostinns,  *  charitetenij  «t 
fac  qnidqnid  yis.'  .  .  .  Bonam  quippe  intentioneni,  hoc  est,  reetam  in  as 
dicimns  ;  opeiationem  vero,  non  quod  boni  aliqnid  in  ae  snscipiaty  sed  qnod 
ex  bona  intentione  procedat.  Unde  et  ab  eodem  homine  cum  in  divenos 
temporibus  idem  fiat,  pro  diveraitate  tamen  intentionis  ejus  operatio  modo 
bona,  modo  mala  didtnr,  et  ita  circa  bonum  et  malum  variari  videtur.  . . . 
Si  intentio  recta  fuerit,  tota  massa  opemm  inde  proirenientinm,  qom  more 
corporalium  rerum  videri  posait,  erit  luce  digna,  hoc  est  bona ;  sic  e  oon- 
trario.  .  .  .  Proprie  tamen  peccatnm  illnd  did  arbitror,  quod  noaqnam 
sine  culpa  contingere  potest.  Ignorare  vero  Deum,  vel  non  ei  crederey 
vel  opera  ipsa  qnse  non  recte  fiunt,  multis  sine  culpa  possunt  aocidere.** 
Concerning  those  who  persecuted  the  martyrs,  or  who  crucified  the  Lord, 
he  says  frankly  :  "  Profecto  secundum  hoc  quod  superius  peccatnm  esse 
descripsimus  oontemptum  Dei,  vel  consentire  in  eo,  in  quod  credit  con- 
sen  tiendum  non  esse,  non  possumus  dicere  eos  in  hoc  peccasse,  nee  igno- 
rantiam  cnjusquam,  vel  ipsam  etiam  infidelitatem,  cum  qua  nemo  salvari 
potest,  peccatum  esse."  —  Qpera,  tom.  ii.  pp.  599,  604,  608,  61i-615,  6ia 


IN  HIS  GONTBOYEBSY  WITH  ABtLABS>.  479 

tue.  The  motion  of  desire  in  a  man  was  not  sinful, 
even  toward  that  which  it  would  be  criminal  for  him 
to  seek ;  only  the  consent  of  the  will  to  the  desire  held 
in  it  the  element  of  sin ;  so  that  the  fiercest  lusts,  if  not 
accepted  by  the  will,  simply  augmented  human  virtue. 
Sin,  in  his  view,  consisted  in  refusing  to  do  what  a 
man  himself  believes  to  be  the  will  of  God,  since  God 
is  injured  by  such  contempt  of  Himself,  but  not  by  any 
external  action.  Of  course  on  this  scheme  there  could 
be  no  proper  condemnation  of  those  whose  consciences 
had  not  been  enlightened,  and  ignorance  of  Divine 
things  might  not  unnaturally  seem  to  many  to  be  prac- 
tically represented  as  man's  safeguard  and  privilege. 
He  did  not  hesitate  to  apply  his  principle  to  those  who 
had  inflicted  cruel  death  on  the  martyrs,  or  had  cruci- 
fied the  Lord ;  and  this  of  course  cut  with  sharpest  edge 
across  the  tenderest  and  the  stubbornest  prejudice  of 
the  time.  He  seemed  an  apologist  for  Pilate  and  the 
Jews. 

Original  sin  he  treats,  as  in  his  commentary  on  the 
Epistle  to  the  Romans,  as  not  sin  in  any  proper  sense, 
but  a  certain  penal  consequence  of  sin,  which  had  come 
upon  all  men  because  it  was  the  pleasure  of  God  that  it 
should,  whose  pleasure  .is  the  supreme  rule  of  right.  ^ 

^  Gnm  itaqae  dicimtis  homines  cam  originaH  peecato  procreari  et  nasci, 
atqQe  hoc  ipaom  originale  peccatam  ex  primo  pannte  oontiahere  ;  magU 
hoc  ad  pcBnam  peccati,  cai  videlicet  poenn  obnoxii  tenemar,  quam  ad  cul- 
pam  animi  et  contemptnm  Dei,  referendum  ridetar.  Qui  enim  nondam 
Ubero  ati  arMtrio  potest,  nee  allnm  adhuc  rationis  exercitinm  habet,  qua 
Denm  lecognoscat  auctorero,  vel  obedientisB  mereatar  pnsceptum,  nulla  est 
ai  traa^greaaio,  nulla  negligentia  impntanda,  nee  nllam  omnino  meritam  quo 
praniio  yel  poena  dignus  sit,  magis  quam  bestiis  ipsis,  quando  in  aliquo  vel 
nooera  vel  javare  videntur.  .  .  .  Hac  quidem  ratione  profiteor,  quoqno- 
modo  Deoa  creaturam  soam  tractare  velit,  nullius  ii^nrin  potest  arguL  Nee 
malom  aliquomodo  potest  dici,  quod  juzta  ^us  voluntatem  fiat.  Non 
anim  aliter  bonam  a  malo  disoernere  possumus,  nisi  quod  ejus  eat  consen- 


480  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBYAUX: 

The  idea  of  any  fall  of  human  nature  in  Adam  was  one 
which  lay  wholly  outside  his  circle  of  thought  Qe 
maintained  that  God  had  been  united  with  humanity 
in  Christ,  as  He  had  been  united  with  it  before  in 
prophets  and  holy  men,,  only  that  what  in  them  had 
been  partial  and  transient,  in  the  Lord  had  been  contin- 
uous and  complete;  and  he  brought  into  unwonted 
clearness  of  exhibition  the  true  human  nature  in  Christ, 
with  its  deep  sensibility  to  sadness  and  the  fear  of 
death,  and  with  that  inherent  possibility  of  sinning 
which  he  conceived  to  belong  by  its  nature  to  free  wilL  ^ 
The  purpose  of  the  Incarnation  had  been  to  impart  to 
men  sweetness  and  light  by  the  instruction  of  Christ, 
and  to  quicken  their  souls  by  the  contact  with  them  of 
this  Divine  temper.'  His  theory  of  the  Atonement  was, 
as  I  have  said,  that  it  was  needed  and  intended  to  en- 
kindle in  us  such  love  toward  Gk)d  as  should  effectually 

taneuin  Tolimtati«  et  in  placito  ejus  eonaifllit.  —  Opera,  In  l^pist  ad 
Boman.,  torn.  iL  pp.  288,  241. 

1  At  yeto  ti  timpUciter  didtor  hominem  illnm,  qni  nnitos  «rt» 
nuUo  modo  peccare  poose,  potest  qoilibet  ambigere.  Si  enim  penitos 
peccare  non  potest,  ant  male  faoere,  quod  meritnm  habet,  cavendo  peo- 
catam  quod  nnllo  modo  potest  oommittere,  ant  qnomodo  etiam  eaTera  id 
dicitnr  quod  nullatenus  incurrere  potest  f  .  .  .  Et  hoc  quidem  ad  liberam 
hominis  arbitrium  pertinet,  ut  in  ^as  sit  potestate  agere  bene  et  maleu 
Quod  si  Christus  non  habuit,  libero  yidetur  priyatos  arbitrio,  et  necessitate 
potius  quam  yoluntate  peccatnm  cayere,  nt  ex  natnra  potins  qnam  ez  giatia 
id  habere.  —  Opera,  In  Epiet  ad  Roman.,  torn.  iL  p.  198. 

*  Yerbum  Dei  yeniens  yerbnm  abbreyiatnm  fecit  super  teiram.  Kulta 
Moyses  locutus  est,  et  tamen,  ut  ait  Apostolus,  "  nihil  ad  perf^ctnm  ad- 
duzit  lez."  Panels  Christus  de  ssdifieatione  morum  et  sanetitate  yits 
apostolos  instruzit,  et  perfectionem  docnit.  Austera  remoyens  et  grayia, 
suayia  pnecepit  et  leyia,  quibus  omnem  oonsnmmayit  raUgionem.  —  BmeL 
yiiL  ;  Opera,  i.  198. 

"  Ad  ostensionem  vam  jnstitiA,"  id  est  caritatis,  qnn  nos,  nt  dictnm 
est,  apud  eum  justificat,  id  est,  ad  ezhibendam  nobis  suam  dilectionem,  yel 
ad  insinuandum  nobis  quantum  eum  diligere  debeamus,  qui  ptpprio  Filie 
auo  non  peperdt  pro  nobis.  —  Opera,  In  Epist  ad  Bonuui.,  torn.  iL  p.  204. 


IN  HIS  OOllTROyEBST  WITH  XBtlASD.  481 

incline  ua  to  do  His  will,  and  make  us  ready  for  suffer- 
ing and  service  in  His  cause,  —  Justification  being  the 
righteousness  of  spirit  begotten  in  men  by  the  power  of 
this  indwelling  love.^  In  this  he  differed  equally  of 
course  from  Bernard  and  from  Anselm,  and  was  per- 
haps the  first  conspicuous  advocate  in  modern  time,  as 
I  ha^e  indicated  in  a  previous  lecture,  of  what  has 
since  been  commonly  known  as  the  moral  theory  of  the 
Atonement 

Of  the  Trinity  he  taught  that  it  was  a  necessary  idea 
of  reason,  which  the  ancient  philosophers  had  held, 
and  that  by  the  Father  was  represented  the  Divine 
power  and  majesty,  by  the  Son  the  Divine  wisdom,  by 
the  Holy  Ghost  the  Divine  benignity  and  love.  He 
did  not  distinctly  deny  the  recognized  personal  distinc- 
tions between  them,  but  he  emphatically  affirmed  that 
the  entire  mystery  could  be  understood  by  men  in  this 
life,  or  be  set  in  line  with  familiar  analogies ;  and  he 
employed  more  than  once  the  construction  of  the  royal 
seal  to  elucidate  the  doctrine.  The  brass  material  is 
the  substance  of  the  seal,  but  the  image  upon  it  is  also 
essential  to  it ;  and  when  it  is  used  in  the  act  of  sealing 

1  Nobis  autem  yidetor  qaod  in  hoc  jnstlficaii  snmiu  in  sangnine  Chriflti, 
et  Deo  Toconciliati,  qaod  per  banc  singularem  gratiam  nobiB  ezhibitam, 
qnod  Filios  sana  nostram  soaoeperit  nataram,  et  in  ipeo  noa  tarn  yerbo 
qnam  ezemplo  inatitnendo  uaqne  ad  mortem  peratitit^  noa  sibi  amplios 
per  amorem  astrinjdt ;  nt  tanto  diyine  gratin  aocenai  beneficio,  nil  jam 
tolerare  propter  ipeam  vera  reformidet  caritas.  .  •  .  Redemptio  itaqne 
nostra  eat  iUa  snmma  in  nobis  per  pasaionem  Obristi  dilectio,  que  nos 
non  solnm  a  aendtate  peccati  liberat,  sed  veram  nobis  filionun  Dei  liber- 
tatem  acqnirit ;  ut  amore  ejos  potios  qnam  timore  cnncta  impleamoa,  qni 
nobis  tantam  exhiboit  gratiam,  qua  major  inTeniri,  ipso  attestante,  non 
potest  .  .  .  Snfficiat  nos  hoc  de  nostra  jastificatione,  immo  omninm,  qa» 
in  caritate  consistit  interposnisae,  et  anteqnam  aacramenta  sascipisntar 
siTs  nostra  siye  JUomnL  —  Opera,  In  Epist  ad  Roman.,  torn.  iL  pp.  807t 
900. 

81 


482  BBRNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX  : 

a  third  property,  he  says,  becomes  evident  in  it,  —  its 
fitness  for  fixing  the  image  on  the  wax.  So  there  is 
to  him  a  certain  trinity  in  the  seal.  ^  And  if, "  he  adds, 
^  these  things  are  applied  in  fitting  proportions  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  Divine  Trinity,  it  is  easy  for  us  from 
the  very  writings  of  the  philosophers  to  refute  the  false 
philosophers  who  assail  us.  For  as  the  brazen  seal  is 
of  the  brass,  and  in  a  certain  way  is  bom  of  it,  so  the 
Son  has  His  being  of  the  substance  of  Ood  the  Father, 
and  accordingly  is  said  to  be  born  of  Him. "  ^  Another 
analogy  or  similitude  in  Nature  is  taken  by  him  from 
the  brilliance  and  warmth  in  the  solar  beam,  — the  Son 
being  represented  by  the  splendor,  and  the  Spirit  by 
the  warmth  of  the  ray;  but  this  he  regards  as  a  less 
perfect  image  of  the  Divine  mystery,  since  neither  the 
splendor  nor  the  heat  can  be  properly  said  to  be  of  the 
same  substance  with  the  sun,  nor  does  the  heat  proceed 
at  the  same  time  from  the  sun  and  from  its  brilliance, 
as  the  Spirit  does  from  the  Father  and  the  Son.  *  So 
the  similitude  derived  from  the  same  water  in  the 
fountain,  in  the  stream,  and  in  the  pond,  is  not  alto- 

^  iEs  qnidem  est  inter  creatnns,  in  qno  titifex  operuiB  et  imigiTtig 
regia  formam  exprimens,  reginm  facit  aigillnm,  qnod  idlieet  ad  sigil- 
landas  literas,  cam  opus  fnerit,  cer»  imprimatur.  Eat  igitor  in  aigillo  iUo 
ipaum  na  materia,  ex  quo  factum  est ;  figura  rtro  ipsa  imaginis  regia, 
forma  ejus  ;  ipsum  toto  sigillum  ex  his  duobus  materiatum  atque  forma- 
tum  dicitur,  quibus  videlicet  sibi  convenientibus  ipsum  est  compositom 
atque  perfectum.  .  •  .  Cum  autem  per  ipsum  sigillari  oeram  eontisgit» 
jam  in  una  eris  substantia  trui  sunt  proprietate  diveraa,  es  Tidelieet 
ipsum,  sigillabile  et  sigiUans.  .  .  .  Qu»  quidem  omnia  si  ad  dinius 
Trinitatis  doctrinam  congmis  proportionibus  redncantur,  fiunle  est  nobi% 
ex  ipsis  philosophomm  documentis,  pseudo-PhUosophos  qui  nos  infestaat, 
refellere.  Sicut  enim  ex  mre  sigillum  est  areum,  et  ez  ipso  qnodammodo 
generatur,  ita  ex  ipsa  Dei  Patris  substantia  Filius  babet  esse,  et  secondum 
hoc  ex  ipso  dicitur  genitus.  —  Opera,  Introd.  ad  TheoL,  ii  p.  97. 

*  Open,  Introd.  ad  TheoL,  tom.  iL  p.  99. 


IN  HIS  OONTBOYERST  WITH  AB&.A1U).  488 

gether  acceptable  to  him,^  while  he  returns  again,  in 
his  commentarj  upon  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans,  to 
this  image  of  the  brazen  seal  or  image  as  more  satisfac- 
tory,' and  in  his  treatise  on  Christian  Theology  takes 
the  waxen  seal  itself,  with  the  figure  enstamped  upon 
it,  as  representing  the  relation  of  the  Father  and  the 
Son.» 

It  is  at  once  apparent  how  foreign  all  this  was  from 
the  moral  habit  and  taste  of  Bernard,  how  utterly  op- 
posed to  his  profound  and  delicate  feeling  as  to  the 
proper  handling  of  what  to  him  were  Divine  mysteries ; 
and  when  it  came  to  pass  that  particular  forms  of  state- 
ment set  forth  distinctly  what  he  deemed  pernicious 
and  heretical  doctrine,  it  could  hardly  be  expected  that 
he  would  passively  acquiesce.  He  would  no  doubt  have 
said  of  even  the  clearest  delineation  of  truth  in  the  cool 
precision  of  philosophical  form,  when  unattended  by 
appropriate  fervor  of  feeling,  that  it  was  thought  with- 
out unction,  a  picture  without  life.  But  when  both  the 
temper  and  the  science  of  holiness  seemed  wanting,  his 
entire  nature  was  stirred  to  its  depths  in  intense  oppo- 
sition. Ab^lard  appeared  to  him  to  be  seeking  simply 
to  exercise  and  exhibit  his  intellectual  power  in  dis- 
cussing the  most  sacred  of  truths,  rudely  dissecting 
them,  and  reducing  them  to  the  compass  of  the  human 
understanding ;  while  he,  on  the  other  hand,  was  intent, 
with  all  the  force  of  his  soul,  on  using  such  truths,  in 
their  heavenly  majesty  and  superlative  mystery,  to  in- 
spire and  cultivate  piety  in  the  heart  To  the  one  the 
stupendous  fact  of  Redemption,  with  its  relations  to 
the  Divine  Trinity,  offered  only  the  most  tempting  of 
themes  for  subtle  speculation,  hazardous  illustration, 

1  opera,  Introd.  ad  Theol.,  torn,  ii  p.  99. 

•  In  Epist  ad  Rom.pp.  179-174.  *  TheoL  ChrUt,  p.  626-627. 


484  BBRMABD  OF  GLAIRY  AUZ  : 

and  a  resolvent  analjais.  To  the  other,  it  was  a  celes- 
tial evangel,  dear  as  Immortality,  raster  than  tiie 
heavens,  tender  as  God. 

Nor  was  it  Ab^lard  alone  who  was  treating  in  this 
way  sacred  themes  in  the  schools.  That  might,  perhaps^ 
have  been  silently  borne.  But  his  disciples  were  going 
every-whither,  with  the  rash  boldness  of  men  impressed 
with  novel  ideas,  and  were  distributing  these  in  forms 
which  their  master  would  very  likely  not  have  approved; 
and  their  declarations  were  coming  to  be  widely  dis- 
cussed, with  ignorant  self-confidence,  by  men  and  women 
unlearned,  unreflective,  and  morally  unprepared  for  any 
high  ranges  of  spiritual  thought.  As  Bernard  wrote  to 
one  of  the  cardinals,  Ab^lard  was  discussing  with  boys, 
conversing  with  women,  about  these  subjects;  he  was 
not  approaching  alone,  as  Moses  did,  to  the  cloudy 
darkness  in  which  God  dwelt,  but  he  moved  thither  at- 
tended by  a  mob  of  disciples.  In  villages  and  streets 
disputation  was  going  on  about  the  child-birth  of  the 
Virgin,  about  the  sacrament  of  the  altar,  about  the  in- 
comprehensible mystery  of  the  Divine  Trinity.  ^  It  is 
easy  to  see  how  all  this  must  have  jarred  on  his  believ- 
ing and  reverent  spirit,  what  sharp  repellence  it  must 

^  HabemuB  in  Francia  monachmn  sine  regala,  tine  aollidtadine  pns- 
latam,  sine  diaciplina  abbatem,  Petnim  Abttlardnm,  disputaatem  com 
pneriB,  conyenantem  cam  malieribos. . . .  Aocedit  non  eolna,  aicat  Moyaei, 
ad  caliginem  in  qua  erat  Dens,  sed  com  tnrba  mnlta  et  disdpnliB  snis. 
Per  vicos  et  plateas  de  fide  CathoUca  diapatator,  de  parta  Viiginis,  de 
Sacramento  altaria,  de  incomprehenaibili  aancttt  Trinitatis  mjsterio.  — 
Opera^  epist  coczxziL,  yoI.  L  coL  628. 

In  the  letter  to  the  Pope,  written  by  Bemaid  on  behalf  of  the  I^neh 
Bishops,  he  speaks  yet  more  strongly  :  "  Itaqne  cam  per  totam  fere  Gal- 
liam  in  civitatibns,  yicia,  et  castellis,  a  acholaribns,  non  solum  intra  acholasb 
sed  etiam  triviatim ;  nee  a  llteratis,  ant  proirectiB  tantom,  sed  a  pneris  et 
simplicibus,  ant  certe  stnltis,  de  sancta  Trinitate,  que  Dens  eat,  diapatars- 
tor ;  etc"  —  Opera^  epist  ccczzzrii.,  toL  L  od.  628. 


IN  HIS  CONTROTFRST  WITH  AB^LABD.  485. 

have  inspired  toward  him  to  whom  he  seemed  con- 
strained to  attribute  it  It  was  almost  as  if  the  Cruci- 
fied and  the  Crowned  were  being  subjected  again  to 
derisive  inquisition  by  the  turbulent  populace;  as  if 
the  heavenly  water  of  life  were  being  dashed  heedlessly 
about  among  defiled  and  broken  earthly  pitchers,  to  be 
itself  defiled  and  spilled.  Not  in  France  alone  was 
this  going  on ;  but  the  writings  which  gave  the  impulse 
to  it  had  crossed  seas  and  mountains,  they  were  read 
in  Italy  as  well  as  in  France,  in  the  Roman  Court  as 
well  as  in  scattered  schools  and  convents.  ^  It  was  cer- 
tainly a  natural  impulse  with  Bernard  to  try,  if  he 
could,  to  check  the  influence  which  seemed  to  him  so 
vastly  disastrous. 

The  entire  spirit  of  restless  inquisition  into  all  things 
known  and  unknown,  which  appeared  in  Ab^lard,  and 
perhaps  more  prominently  in  his  disciples,  was  one 
with  which  the  abbot  of  Clairvaux  could  have  had 
little  sympathy.  It  led  afterwards,  as  we  know,  to  the 
discussion  of  the  most  absurd  questions,  as  ^'What 
would  have  happened  if  Adam  had  not  been  seduced  by 
Eve  ? ''  "  Whether  the  stars  are  animals  ?  "  "  Why  it 
is  that  plantB  can  not  grow  in  the  fire  7  "  ^  Why  man 
has  no  horns  on  his  forehead  ?  "  ^^  What  is  the  reason 
for  putting  the  nose  above  the  month  in  the  human  coun- 
tenance ?  "  with  other  questions  of  the  sorb^  Whether 
Bernard,  with  his  intuitive  and  prophetic  sensibility, 
anticipated  any  such  extravagant  exhibition  of  the  curi- 

1  William  of  St.  Thieny  wrote  of  hia  books :  "PMrns  enim  AbnUrdiia 
iteram  nova  docet,  nova  seribit ;  et  libri  ejus  transeoiit  maiia,  trannliant 
Alpes ;  et  norm  ejus  sententis  de  fide,  et  nova  dogmata  per  pronneias  et 
regna  defemntnr,  celebriter  pnedicantiir,  et  libera  defendontiir ;  in  tantnm 
nt  in  cnria  Bomana  dicantnr  babere  auctoritatem."  —  Opera  3.  Sem,,  voL 
L  coL  <U.5. 

*  See  Batiflbonne,  Hiat  de  8.  Bernard,  torn.  iL  p.  9. 


486  BERNARD   OP  CLAIRYAUZ  : 

0U8  and  quoBtioning  temper  rising  around  him  cannot 
be  known,  though  it  seems  not  impossible ;  but  enough 
was  already  apparent  to  him  to  repel  and  to  shock  his 
practical,  yet  serious  and  contemplative  spirit 

One  takes,  too,  a  certain  impression  of  Ab^lard  —  it 
seems  quite  clear  that  Bernard  felt  it  —  that  he  did  not 
utter  all  his  thought ;  that  he  was  so  far  restrained  by 
the  Church-limitations  which  it  was  not  safe  altogether 
to  transgress,  as  to  practise  economy  in  the  statement 
of  opinion,  and  that  his  principles  really  involved  more 
radical  conclusions  than  he  announced.     The  tendency 
of  his  teaching  undoubtedly  was  to  loosen  men  from  a 
sense  of  dependence  on  the  sacraments  of  the  Church,  as 
the  channels  and  instruments  of  that  gracious  operation 
which  united  men  to  Ood ;  and  Amauld  of  Brescia,  who 
had  probably  been  his  pupil,  who  was  certainly  his 
ardent  and  out-spoken  friend,  had  become  the  vehement 
assailant  in  Italy,  not  only  of  the  vices  and  misrule  of 
the  clergy,  in  which  Bernard  must  have  sympathized 
with  him,  but  of  the  whole  papal  system  as  connected 
with  the  State,  and  of  the  objective  validity  of  the  sac- 
raments themselves.      His  discourses  had  aroused  a 
prodigious  excitement  at  Rome,  and  in  the  provinces ; 
many  had  come  to  be  arrayed  in  fierce  hostility  against 
the  Church;  and  after  he  had  been  expelled  from  the 
country,  to  find  a  transient  refuge  at  Zm*ich,  the  dis- 
turbances had  continued,  till  the  very  fabric  of  the 
papacy  seemed  endangered.^ 

1  Arnanldi  it  wiU  be  remembered,  suffered  martyrdom  at  Borne  A.  d. 
1155,  being  then  about  fifty  years  old.  In  A.  D.  1882  a  bronse  statoe 
was  erected  to  him  at  Brescia  in  Lombardy,  his  native  city,  and  a  mvatX 
tablet  in  his  honor  was  erected  by  the  municipality  of  Rome  in  the  Piaza 
del  Popolo,  where  his  body  had  been  burned,  and  from  which  the  ashei 
had  been  taken  to  be  thrown  into  the  Tiber. 


i 


IN  HIB  CONTBOVERST  WITH  ABJSlABD.  487 

It  was  therefore  to  be  expected  that  the  oppoeition  to 
Ab^lard  which  had  already  been  vigorously  shown  by 
Norbert  of  Pr^montr^,  by  William  of  Champeaux  — 
who  had  really  saved  the  life  of  Bernard  —  and  by 
Walter  of  St  Victor,  a  temperate,  intelligent,  and  con- 
ciliatory man,i  should  also  ^t  length  be  shown  by  Ber- 
nard, and  with  more  conclusive  and  crushing  force. 
Theirs  was  not  an  individual  controversy.  The  men 
represented  colliding  tendencies.  Two  systems,  two 
ages,  came  into  shattering  conflict  in  their  persons. 
It  was  heart  against  head;  a  fervent  sanctity  against 
the  critical  and  rationalizing  temper ;  an  adoring  faith 
in  mysterious  truths,  believed  to  have  been  announced 
by  God,  against  the  dissolving  and  destructive  analysis 
which  would  force  those  truths  into  subjection  to  the 
human  understanding.  It  was  the  whole  series  of  the 
Church  Fathers,  fitly  and  signally  represented  by  Ber- 
nard, against  recent  Uiinkers  who  questioned  everything, 
who  refused  to  be  bound  by  any  authority,  who  valued 
Aristotle  as  superior  to  Augustine,  who  regarded  sybils 
and  poets  as  at  least  equally  with  the  prophets  in- 
spired heralds  of  Christ,*  and  who  were  really  antici- 

^  Of  hU  letter  to  Ab^lard,  the  rabstaDoe  of  which  as  well  as  of  the  reply 
to  it  IB  given  in  the  *'  Hist  litt^raire/*  yoL  ziii.,  p.  514,  R^musat  says  : 
"  Cette  lettre  mesnr^  et  encore  bienveillante  est  an  modMe  du  ton  que  la 
oontroTerse  anrait  d^  toiyonrs  consenrer  ;  mais  oet  exemple  ne  Int  gaire 
hnit^.  _  ru  tTAhOard,  i.  180. 
^  *  At  Tero  ne  aliqais  Jbths  inter  homines  sapientis  fama  ceteris  pnw- 
tantes  fidei  nostne  testiponiis  desit,  ilia  etiam  famosa  SybiUa  indncator, 
qae  diiinitatem  Verbi,  nee  humanitatem,  nee  utromque  adventom,  nee 
ntnunqne  jndidam  Yerbi  describendo  pretennisit ;  primnm  qnidem  jndi- 
cinm  qno  Ghristns  iojnste  jndicatns  est  in  passions,  et  secandnm  quo  juste 
judicatums  est  mnndum  in  majestate.  .  .  .  Hoc  profecto  Sybills  vatici- 
nium,  ni  fallor,  maximns  ills  poetarum  nostrorum  Yirgilius  andierat  atque 
attenderat,  cum  in  quarta  Ecloga  fnturum  in  proximo  sub  Augusto  CSttsare, 
tempore  consulatos  Pollionis,  mitabilem  cigasdam  pueri  de  cobIo  ad  tenas 


490  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUZ  : 

and  hrieiy  promising  to  attend  to  the  matter  after  the 
Easter  solemnities  which  at  the  time  engaged  him,  and 
then  to  meet  and  confer  with  William.^  He  seems 
certainly  not  to  have  been  disposed  to  be  hurried,  even 
by  the  urgency  of  one  whom  he  greatly  esteemed,  into 
any  rash  or  sudden  course.  After  a  time,  however,  he 
took  up  the  books,  examined  them  for  himself,  and  re- 
ceived the  same  impression  from  them  which  had  before 
been  expressed  by  William.  He  then  sought  a  per- 
sonal interview  with  Ab^lard,  at  which,  according  to 
Oodf rey,  his  secretary,  the  latter  promised  amendment 
of  whatever  had  been  amiss  in  his  writings,  and  agreed 
to  submit  them  to  the  correction  of  Bernard.' 

The  interview  of  course  terminated  amicably;  bat 
when  Ab^lard  was  released  from  the  presence  of  his 
critic  he  again  affirmed  his  former  opinions,  declared 
them  to  be  orthodox,  and  possibly  gave  fresh  diligence 
to  extending  them.  Bernard  then  began  to  warn  men 
against  him,  and  as  far  as  he  could  to  withdraw  his 
books  from  the  hands  of  those  who  were  moved  to  read 
them ;  and  he  wrote  earnest  letters  to  the  Pope  and  the 
cardinals,  protesting  against  what  he  regarded  as  novel, 
eccentric,  and  dangerous  doctrines,  and  invoking  aid  to 
arrest  their  circulation. 

Ab^lard  was  not  one  to  shun  public  controversy ;  he 
was  familiar  with  it,  he  even  loved  and  sought  it;  and 
as  a  great  synod  was  about  to  be  assembled  at  Sens, 
the  archi-episcopal  city  of  a  vast  province,  in  which  the 

N  ^  Epist.  oeczxyiL,  i.  ool.  617. 
*  Qui  nimiram  solita  bonitate  et  bemgnitate  desideruis  erroram  oonigi, 
non  hominem  confandi,  aecreta  illnm  admonitione  conyanit.  Cam  quo 
etiam  tarn  modeste,  tamqne  rationabiliter  egit,  at  ille  qaoqae  componctni 
ad  ipslas  arbitrium  correctunim  se  promitteret  anireraa.  —  Opira,  Vita,  i 
lik  iiL  ToL  aec.,  ool.  2199. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOTEBST  WITH   AB^LABD.  491 

bishops  of  Troyes,  Orleans,  Ghartres,  Auxerre,  Nevers, 
Meaux,  and  of  Paris  itself  were  only  suffragans,  —  a 
Council  at  which  the  king  was  to  be  present,  with  a 
numerous  concourse  of  prelates  and  nobles,  — he  wrote 
to  the  archbishop,  claiming  the  privilege  of  appearing 
before  it  to  yindicate  his  opinions.  The  archbishop 
readily  consented,  and  Ab^lard  invited  his  disciples  to 
come,  to  be  spectators  and  participants  of  his  triumph. 

Bernard,  as  I  have  said,  had  been  at  first  wholly  dis- 
inclined to  accept  the  invitation,  or  rather  the  requisi- 
tion, of  the  archbishop,  and  to  meet  the  philosopher  for 
personal  debate.  He  was  keenly  conscious  of  his  own 
want  of  practice  in  dialectical  discussion,  and  was,  be- 
sides, unwilling  to  have  what  he  regarded  as  authori- 
tative truth  involved  in  the  confusions,  and  exposed  to 
the  risks,  of  promiscuous  debate.  At  last,  however,  find- 
ing that  his  hesitancy  was  only  increasing  the  fame  of 
his  opponent,  as  well  as  encouraging  his  disciples,  and 
giving  ScliU  to  his  opinions,  and  mindful  as  he  says  of 
the  words  of  the  Scripture,  ^  Do  not  premeditate  what 
ye  shall  answer,  for  it  shall  be  given  you  in  that  same 
hour  what  ye  shall  say, ''  and  of  those  other  words,  ^'  The 
Lord  is  my  helper,  I  will  not  fear  what  man  can  do 
to  me, "  ^  he  answered  the  call  of  the  metropolitan,  and 
appeared  at  the  Council. 

The  assembly  was,   as  it  had  been  known  that  it 

1  Oedens  tamen  (licet  viz,  iU  tit  flerem)  oonsUio  amicoram,  qtii  videntei 
qnomodo  m  quasi  ad  spectaealom  omnea  panient,  timebant  ne  de  nostra 
absentia  et  scandalnm  popolo,  et  comna  crescerent  adTsrsario  ;  et  quia 
error  magis  confirmaretar,  oiim  non  esaet  qui  responderet  ant  conttadi- 
oeret;  occnrri  ad  locum  et  diem,  imparatus  qnidem  et  immnnitos,  nisi 
qnod  illnd  mente  ▼olyebam,  "Nolite  prameditari,  qnaliter  respondeatis ; 
dahitor  enim  vobis  in  Ula  bora  quid  loquamini ; "  et  illud,  "  Dominus 
mibi  a^jutor,  non  timebo  quid  faciat  mihi  bomo."  —  OperOf  epist  clzzxiz. 
▼ol.  prim.,  ooL  418. 


492  BERNARD  OP  CLAXRYAnZ: 

would  be,  unusually  brilliant,  large,  and  influentiaL 
The  city  of  Sens  —  now  a  small  town  of  twelve  thou- 
sand inhabitants,  not  far  from  Fontainebleau,  still  sur- 
rounded in  part  by  its  ancient  ramparts,  and  in  which 
stands  a  superb  cathedral  not  wholly  finished  when  the 
Council  met  in  June,  a.  d.  1140: — ^^  ^U  not  only  of 
men  in  high  civil  rank,  but  of  bishops,  abbots,  masters 
of  9chools,  learned  clerks.  The  king  was  present ;  the 
archbishop  of  Bheims,  with  three  of  his  suffragans. 
Perhaps  no  other  assembly  had  been  convened  repre- 
senting more  of  the  learning  of  the  time,  of  its  trained 
mental  and  dialectical  power,  or  of  its  real,  though 
possibly  its  mistaken  piety  and  zeal  for  the  truth.  It 
was  an  assembly,  in  the  main,  such  as  Ab^lard  himself 
might  well  have  chosen,  as  in  fact  he  had  chosen  it, 
for  his  proper  tribunal ;  and  a  not  inconsiderable  part 
of  it  was  composed  of  his  own  avowed  followers  or 
secret  friends.  ^  They  naturally  expected  from  him,  as 
did  the  Church -dignitaries,  as  did  Bernard  himself  the 
most  daring  and  complete  intellectual  work  of  all  his 
life,  the  most  eloquent,  effective,  and  commanding  ex- 
hibition of  what  was  peculiar  in  his  opinions.  They 
looked  to  see  him  skilfully  and  forcibly  override  opposi- 
tion, as  he  so  often  had  done  in  the  schools,  stimulating 
disciples,  silencing  dissenters,  answering  objections, 
and  if  not  convincing  those  who  opposed  him,  yet  con- 
quering even  their  applause ;  and  in  the  assured  expec* 
tation  of  this  his  friends  already  shared  his  triumph. 

^  Itaqne  pnesente  glorioeo  rege  Francoram,  Lndovico,  cam  Willelmo 
religioso  NivehuB  comite,  domiDo  qnoque  Rementi  archiApiscopo^  com 
quibaBdam  saia  suSnganeis  episcopia,  nobia  etiam  et  aofiraganeia  noetnii 
exceptia  Paiiaioa  et  Nivernia,  epiaoopia  preaentibaa,  cam  moltia  raligioBia 
abbatibaa  et  aapientiboa,  yaldeqae  litteratia  clerida,  adfait  dommna  abbaa 
Clam-VaUeaaia,  adfuit  roagister  Petraa  com  faatoribua  aoia.  —  EpiaL 
eooxxxYU.  [Fraaci»  Episcoporam],  Bernard'a  Opan»  toL  prim.,  coL  dS9. 


IN  HIB  OONTBOYBBST  WITH  AB^LABD.  488 

The  result  was  an  astonishment  to  alL  Bernard 
began  with  no  argument.  He  had  collated  passages 
from  the  writings  of  Ab^lard,  seventeen  in  number, 
which  he  judged  heretical  and  contrary  to  the  faith  of 
the  Churchy  and  he  called  for  the  reading  of  these,  that 
Ab^lard  might  declare  whether  he  recognized  the  pas- 
sages as  his  own,  and  then  might  either  retract  or  de- 
fend them.  But  the  clerk  had  hardly  begun  to  read 
when  Ab^lard,  to  the  universal  surprise,  standing  mid- 
way in  the  aisle,  commanded  him  to  desist,  protested 
that  he  would  hear  no  further,  and  took  an  instant 
appeal  to  the  Pope.  He  thereupon  left  the  assembly. 
Bernard's  amazement  was  not  less  than  that  of  others. 
He  earnestly  assured  Ab^lard  that  nothing  of  harm  was 
intended  to  his  person,  that  he  might  answer  freely 
and  in  perfect  security,  that  he  would  be  heard  with 
patience,  and  would  not  be  checked  or  smitten  by  a 
premature  sentence.^  But  nothing  could  detain  the 
determined  fugitive,  and  he  abruptly  left  the  Council. 
Bernard  then  insisted  that  even  in  his  absence  the 
scrutiny  of  his  published  opinions  should  proceed,  and 
a  judgment  upon  them  should  be  pronounced,  as  other- 
wise no  practical  result  would  have  been  reached.  On 
the  following  days,  therefore,  the  various  passages 
which  had  been  cited  were  considered  and  discussed, 
and  fourteen  of  them  were,  condemned,  especially  those 
concerning  the  Trinity,  the  Divine  Nature  of  Christ, 
His  redemptive  work,   man's  dependence   on  saving 

>  Sed  et  postea  ab  agregio  illo  Catholice  fidei  adyocato  monitna,  nt  Tal 
jam  Rciena  in  panonam  soam  nibU  agendum,  reaponderet  tarn  libere,  qnam 
aeoare,  audiendaa  tantnm  et  ferendna  in  omni  patientia,  son  aententia  aliqna 
feriendna  ;  hoc  qnoqae  omnimodie  recniairit  Nam  et  confesans  est  poatea 
aoia,  ut  ainnt,  quod  ea  hora,  maxima  qiiidem  ex  parte  memoria  ejus  tnr- 
bata  fnerit,  ratio  ealigayerit,  et  interior  fagerit  aanaoB.  —  Opera,  Vita,  i. 
lik  iiL  cap.  6,  toL  aec,  ooU.  2199-2300. 


X 


^ 


494  BBBNASD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

grace,  and  the  nature  of  sin  as  haying  its  roots  in  the 
present  intention.  The  report  of  the  synod  upon  the 
matter  was  drawn  up  by  Bernard,  at  the  request  of 
the  bishops,  and  forwarded  to  Borne.  ^  Energetic  per- 
sonal letters  were  also  written  by  him  to  the  Pope 
and  to  cardinals;^  and  the  whole  case  was  remitted  to 
the  papal  decision. 

No  satisfactory  account  has  ever  been  given  of  this 
unexpected  action  of  Ab^Iard.  He  had  the  most  dis- 
tinguished audience  that  he  could  ever  hope  to  address ; 
an  audience  more  favorable  to  him,  in  the  main,  than  he 
could  expect  to  have  afterward  convened  if  he  should 
now  falter  and  fail  He  was  by  far  the  most  expert 
and  veteran  logician  present,  as  well  as  the  most 
practised  and  fascinating  speaker,  with  the  single  ex- 
ception of  the  abbot  of  Clairvaux ;  and  on  the  themes 
which  were  there  to  be  exhibited  the  abbot  had  had  no 
experience  like  his  own  in  public  discussion.  He  had 
himself  invited  the  contest,  and  had  seemed  to  look  to 
it  with  eager  expectation.  Until  his  final  step  was 
taken,  it  appeared  as  certain  as  almost  any  sequence  in 
nature  that  he  would  at  least  fight  a  brilliant,  gallant, 
and  strenuous  battle  for  his  opinions,  that  he  would 
dexterously  explain  and  eloquently  defend  them,  and 
would  marshal  all  the  resources  of  his  learning  to 
show  that  they  were  permissible,  at  least,  in  the  judg- 
ment of  the  Fathers.  He  would  thus  have  carried  with 
him,  beyond  a  doubt,  the  admiration  and  support  of 
large  numbers  of  his  hearers ;  and  even  if  at  last  con- 
demned would  have  consoled  himself  and  them  with 
the  reflection  that  he  had  done  what  he  could  for  his 
own  honor,  and  for  the  philosophy  whicdi  he  loved, 

1  Opera,  epist.  ccczzxrii.  vol.  prim.,  oolL  627-6S0. 
*  Open,  epiflt.  ccczxz.-occzxzt.,  et  oL,  oolL  620-682. 


IN  HIS  CONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB<LABD.      496 

though  at  last  overpowered  by  unintelligent  votes,  the 
predetermined  weight  of  a  prejudiced  majority.  On 
such  a  showing  his  prestige  in  the  kingdom  would  have 
only  been  advanced.  His  followers  would  have  felt 
more  confident  than  ever  that  the  Future  was  his,  and 
that  opposition  to  his  influence  was  only  for  a  time; 
and  then  he  could  have  appealed  to  Rome,  where  he 
had  many  friends,  and  where  there  was  in  certain  high 
quarters  a  settled  jealousy  of  the  power  of.  Bernard, 
with  a  far  clearer  hope  of  success.  ^  His  refusal  to  plead 
at  all  before  the  synod  gave  the  death-blow  to  his  power. 
Of  this  refusal  it  may  be  that  B^musat  gives  the  right 
explanation  when  he  says  that  Ab^lard  was  at  once 
imprudent  and  weak,  rash  in  undertaking  things,  and 
easily  carried  off  his  balance,  having  no  consistent 
courage  for  action,  though  he  had  a  high  spirit;  and 
when  he  adds  that  with  all  in  him  which  was  fine  and 
great  he  lacked  the  firmness  and  force  of  consecration.  * 
Ouizot  adds  to  this  the  effect  probably  produced  upon 
his  mind  by  the  sudden  sense  of  the  vast  contrast  be- 

1  Docb  war  der  Papst  nicht  immer  mit  dem  RefoimatioDseifer  Bernhards 
xnfrieden.  Die  romiachen  Kaidinale  aahen  auch  wohl  mit  eifereiichtigen 
Angen  den  Monch  an,  Ton  dem  rich  Fiirsten,  Biaclidfe  und  aelbet  papet- 
liche  Legaten  leiten  liesaen.  Der  p&petUche  Kanzler  Hatmerich  hatte 
ihm  daher  den  frenndachaftlichen  Rath  ertheilt,  ''rich  nm  die  Angelegen- 
heiten  der  Welt  nicht  mehr  so  yiel  bekiimmem,  weil  dies  einem  Monch 
nicht  zieme."  Es  waren  mehrere  Angelegenheiten,  welche  ihm  Ungnade 
am  romiachen  Hofe  zngezogen  hatten.  —  Der  heU.  Bern,,  ss.  87-88. 

The  letter  of  Haimerich,  to  which  the  xlviitth  of  Bernard  replies,  was 
written  prohahly  ten  years  hefore  the  Council  of  Sens  [circa  1180],  hut  the 
old  jealousy  had  lost  nothing  of  its  activity  in  the  interval. 

s  Mais  nons  savons  qu'il  dtait  imprudent  et  affaibli,  t^m^raire  pour  en- 
treprendre  et  facile  k  ^roouvoir.  *'  II  n'avait  nuUe  audace  pour  Taction," 
dit  nn  historien,  "quolqn'il  en  eiit  beauconp  dans  Tesprit"  .  .  .  Cherchez 
en  lui  le  chr^tien,  le  penseur,  le  novatenr,  Tamant  enfin ;  vous  trouverez 
toi\}onni  qn'il  lui  manque  une  grande  chose,  la  fermet^  da  d^vouement  — 
VU  ^AhHardy  torn.  i.  pp.  208,  274. 


V? 


496  BEBNABD  OF  CLAiByAnz: 


tween  Bernard,  with  his  clear  sense,  his  straight-for- 
ward piety,  and  his  high  character,  and  the  artificial 
and  rhetorical  opponents  whom  Ab^lard  had  been  wont 
to  meet^  But  whatever  the  reason  for  his  unforeseen 
action,  whether  anything  in  himself,  anything  in  the 
circumstances,  or  any  apprehension  of  that  unsearchable 
power  which  seemed  to  reside  in  the  spirit  of  Bernard 
beneath  the  pale  face  and  meagre  form,  there  can  be 
no  doubt  that  Ab^lard  went  from  the  Council  to  the 
street  on  that  June  day  a  beaten  and  a  broken  man. 
Individual  minds  still  felt,  for  long,  the  impress  of  his 
influence.  His  name  became  prominent  again,  in  sub- 
sequent discussion,  after  he  had  left  the  earth ;  and,  in 
its  measure,  it  has  continued  to  be  so  to  our  own  time. 
But  his  wide  and  shining  though  already  shaded  and 
limited  reign  over  the  mind  of  contemporaneous  France 
was  finally  ended,  then  and  there. 

In  spite  of  all  his  influence  at  Rome,  he  was  con* 
demned  by  Innocent,  with  his  writings,  and  silence 
was  imposed  upon  him,  while  in  accompanying  man- 
dates his  books  were  ordered  to  be  burned,  and  him- 
self to  be  imprisoned  in  a  convent  All  this  had  been 
determined  at  Rome  before  he  was  able  to  reach  the 

^  G'est  nn  grand  spectacle  qne  oette  attitude  simple,  pratique,  d^d^ 
que  prend  d^  le  d^but  oet  homme  qui  avait  d'aboid  ^lad^  le  combat ; 
spectacle  d'autant  plus  beau  que  ce  n'est  point  au  nom  du  poavoir  de  fait, 
et  en  yertn  de  la  force  dont  il  dispose,  que  Saint  Bernard  traite  Abailard  de 
la  sorts.  .  .  .  Bernard  n'est,  comme  Abailard,  qu'an  moine  qui  parle  an 
nom  de  la  v^rit^.  .  .  .  Si  nn  sayant  d^bat  se  fftt  engag^,  il  e^t  retrony^ 
sans  doate  cette  f^condit^  oet  ^clat,  cette  sonplesse  d'aigamentation.  qni 
avaient  fait  sa  renomm^.  Le  philosophe  ^tait  profond,  le  dialecticien 
Eminent,  roratenr  Eloquent ;  mais  Thomme  ^tait  faible,  incertain  dans  sa 
▼olont^  plus  arrogant  qu'assar^  dans  sa  science,  an  moins  anssi  Taniteux 
qne  convaincn,  et  son  bean  g^nie  se  tronblait  devant  le  sens  droit  et  le 
caract^re  haut  de  son  rival.  —  Ouizot:  Abailard  d  MUofm,  p.  Izzr. 
Paris  ed.,  1853. 


IN  HIS  OONTBOYEBST  WITH  AB^LARD.  497 

city,^  and  while  he  was  still  on  his  way  thither.  It 
was  of  coarse  immensely  mi  just, — such  a  hasty  decision 
of  such  an  appeal,  in  the  necessary  absence  of  the  ap« 
pellant;  but  it  shows,  with  emphasis,  how  wide  and 
strong  the  prepossessions  against  him  had  come  to  be. 
When  intelligence  of  the  papal  judgment  reached  him 
he  was  tarrying  for  a  brief  rest  at  Clugni,  as  a  guest  of 
the  abbot,  Peter  the  Venerable,  being  then  upon  his 
way  toward  Rome.  Peter  was  one  of  the  noblest  of  his 
time,  sincerely  orthodox,  fervently  devout,  but  full  of 
a  sweet  Christian  benignity  which,  more  even  than  his 
high  rank,  and  the  power  and  wealth  of  his  monastery, 
gave  him  influence  in  the  Church,  and  indeed  with  all 
men.  The  rule  of  his  life  seems  to  have  been  that 
which  he  laid  down  in  a  noble  letter  written  to  Bernard 
on  the  subject  of  the  differences,  in  practice  and  in 
feeling,  which  existed  among  convents  of  the  different 
orders:  ^^The  Bule  of  Benedict  is  always  subordinate 
to  the  law  of  charity."* 

He  received  Ab^lard  with  affectionate  courtesy,  inter- 
ceded for  him  with  the  Pope,  secured  even  his  recon- 
ciliation with  Bernard,  whom  Ab^lard  afterward  speaks 
of  as  his  friend,^  and  obtained  permission  from  the 

1  July  16,  A.  D.  1140. 

'  Bflgalft  ilia  illiiu  sancti  PatriR,  ex  ilia  aaUimi,  at  generali  charitatis 
Regala  pendet,  ex  qua  et  in  qua,  jnxta  Veritatis  ▼erba,  "uzdTena  lex  pen- 
dety  et  piophete."  Qnod  si  nniveraa  lex,  tnno  et  illioB  Bc|giil»  lex.  Mo- 
sachas  eigo  Begolam  patria  Benedicti  profitena,  tnno  earn  ▼ere  serrat, 
qnando  in  eeiratis  vel  mntatia  qnibaslibet  ejna  capitaHa,  charitatiB  legem 
nbiqne  oonservat  —  Optra  Pet,  Ven,,  epiat.,  lib.  ir,,  xvii.  ool.  881. 

'  Qnod  antem  Capitnla  contra  me  ecripta  tali  fine  amicoa  noeter  conda- 
aerit,  etc.  —  Apologia  ant  Confettio,  Opera,  ii.  723. 

In  hia  letter  to  the  Pope  on  behalf  of  Ab^lard,  Petw  the  Venerable  aaya : 
"  iTit,  rediit,  cnm  domino  ClarseTallensi,  meditate  Ciatereienai,  lopitia 
prioriboa  qneielia  ee  padfice  oonyenisae^  Tereraaa  ratnlit.  —  Opera  FtL 
Fm,,  epitty  lib.  !▼.»  £▼.  ool.  806. 

82 


498  BERNARD  OF  GLAIBTAUZ  : 

Boman  court  to  retain  under  his  care  the  shattered  old 
man,  broken  at  last  by  long  labors  and  many  calamities. 
In  that  gentle  and  wealthy  monastery,  surrounded  by 
those  who  had  welcomed  and  who  honored  him,  watched 
over  with  a  loving  solicitude  by  the  benign  and  thought- 
ful abbot,  and  permitted  again  to  use  and  enjoy  the 
sacred  offices  from  which  for  a  time  he  had  been  de- 
barred, the  last  two  years  of  his  harassed  and  disap- 
pointing life  were  peacefully  passed. 

It  is  not  probable  that  he  changed  his  opinions.  He 
had  always  insisted  that  they  were  in  essential  harmony 
with  the  Catholic  faith;  and  while  he  is  careful  in  his 
^^  Apologia  "  to  emphasize  his  convictions  of  that  faith, 
and  to  call  God  to  witness  that  he  had  intended  to  say 
nothing  against  it,  he  does  not  retract  his  previous 
words,  but  attributes  many  things  said  against  him  to 
malice  or  ignorance,  and  asks  only  that  whatever  in 
his  writings  may  appear  of  doubtful  meaning  shall  be 
interpreted  in  the  spirit  of  charity.  ^  He  left  his  books 
as  they  were,  erasing  nothing;  and  if  he  then  com- 
pleted, as  seems  probable,  his  principal  work  on  Dia- 
lectics, it  shows  his  unextinguished  expectation  that 
his  name  would  survive,  that  his  influence  would  con- 
tinue, and  that  coming  ages  would  accept  and  applaud 
the  doctrines  .which  he  had  taught  But  his  habits 
were  austere ;  his  manner  was  humble ;  his  reading  was 
continual,  at  every  opportunity;  his  silence  was  con- 
stant, except  when  appealed  to  for  instruction  by  others ; 
he  was  diligently  observant  of  the  sacraments,  and  of 

^  Sed  aicut  cnteim  contra  me  Gapituk,  ita  et  hoc  qaoqae  per  nMillHAm 
▼el  ignonintiam  prolatom  est.  .  .  .  ChaiitatU  qvippe  est  opprobrimn  Don 
accipeie  adversns  proximam,  et  qoie  dnbia  sunt,  in  melioiem  partem  inter- 
pretari,  et  illam  semper  Dominicft  pietatis  sententiam  attendeie :  <*  Nolite 
Jndioar^  et  non  jndicabimini**  —  Opera  AM.,  tom.  ii.  pp.  72a»73S. 


^ 


IN  HIB  GONTBOTEBST  WITH  ASiLABD.      499 

prayer.  A  more  graphic  and  touching  outline  sketch 
of  a  patieaty  devout,  and  thoughtful  old  age,  has  hardly 
been  written  than  that  sent  to  H^loise  by  Peter  the 
Venerable  after  the  death  of  Ab^lard,  describing  his 
last  years  in  the  convent,  to  which,  as  Peter  says,  a 
divine  arrangement  had  sent  this  honored  philosopher 
and  servant  of  Christ,  enriching  the  monastery  with  a 
gift  more  precious  than  of  gold  and  topaz.  ^  An  im- 
mense lime-tree  long  stood  in  the  grounds  of  the  con- 
vent, under  which,  according  to  a  persistent  tradition, 
he  whose  sun  was  now  fast  descending  in  the  west  used 
to  sit  for  hours,  silently  meditating,  with  his  face  al- 
ways turned  toward  the  site  of  the  Paraclete,  in  which 
H^loise  had  her  home  among  her  nuns.'  Reminis- 
cences and  hopes  blended,  we  may  be  sure,  in  his 
crowding  thoughts,  as  such  quiet  hours  wore  on.     We 

1  De  fllo,  88»pe  ac  aemper  enm  honore  nominando,  serro  to  yere  Chiisti 
]^lo6opho  magistro  Peiro,  quern  in  nltimiB  yitn  vam  annis,  eadem  diTiiia 
dispoeitio  Cloniacum  transmisit :  et  earn  in  ipeo  et  de  ipso,  super  omue 
aurum  et  topazion  munere  cariore,  ditavit.  Ci^ub  sancta,  humili  ac  devotas 
inter  noe  conTeraationi*  quod  quantumve  Cluniacua  testimonium  ferat, 
brerii  senno  non  esLplicat  Nisi  enim  fallor,  non  recolo  yidisae  me  illi 
in  humilitatis  habitu  et  gestu  similem,  in  tantnm  ut  nee  Germanns  abjec- 
tior,  nee  ipse  Martinus  bene  discementi  panperior  appareret.  .  .  .  Lectio 
erat  ei  oontinua,  oratio  frequens,  silentium  juge,  nisi  cum  aut  fratmm 
familiaris  collatio,  aut  ad  ipsos  in  oonventu  de  divinis  publious  sermo  sum 
loqui  urgebant  Sacramenta  coelestia,  immortalis  Agni  saorificium  Deo  of- 
ferendo,  prout  poterat,  frequentabat  .  .  .  Et  quid  multa  f  Mens  qua, 
lingua  ejus,  opus  ejus,  semper  divina,  semper  pbilosopbica,  semper  erudi- 
toria  meditabatur,  docebat,  fatebatur.  .  .  .  Hoc  magister  Petrns  fine  dies 
suoe  eonsummavit,  et  qui  singular!  scienti»  magirterio,  toti  pane  orbi 
terrarum  notus,  et  ubiqne  famosns  erat,  in  illius  discipulatn  qui  dixit, 
"  Discite  a  me,  quia  mitis  sum  et  humiUs  oorde,"  mitis  et  humilis  perse- 
Terans,  ad  ipsum,  ut  dignum  est  credere,  do  tnmsiTit  —  Opvra  M.  F#ii., 
epist.,  lib.  iT.,  xzi  ooU.  850-858. 

The  letter  is  repeated  in  Ab^lard's  Opera,  i.  pp.  710-71  i. 

'  Lamartine,  Memoirs  of  Celebrated  Characters,  L  188.  New  York  ed., 
18S4. 


500  BBBNABD  OF  GLAntTAUX: 

may  believe  that  the  sad  bitterness  of  remembrance  was 
merged  and  lost  in  the  brightening  expectation  which 
reached  forward  to  things  celestial.^ 

On  account  of  his  failing  health,  for  the  sake  of 
change  of  scene  and  a  more  genial  air,  he  waa  sent  by 
the  Abbot  to  the  priory  of  St  Marcel,  near  Ch&lons  on 
the  Sadne,  in  one  of  the  most  delightful  situations  to  be 
found  in  Burgundy ;  but  his  strength  waa  too  far  gone 

^  In  tiie  Opera  of  Ab^lard  (torn.  i.  pp.  295-S28X  u«  contained  ninety- 
three  hymns  written  by  him  for  nae  at  the  Paraclete  by  H^oue  and  her 
nuns.  Two  lines  of  a  ninety-fourth  are  giTen,  which  is  supposed  to  hsYS 
been  interrupted  by  his  death.  The  foUowing  beautiful  translatioii  of  one 
of  these  hymns,  the  twenty-eighth,  begiuning  "O  quanta,  qualia  sunt  ilia 
Sabbata,"  is  by  the  late  Dr.  S.  W.  Duffield,  of  Bloomfield,  New  Jeney :  — 

AT  VESPERS. 

Oh,  what  shall  be,  Oh,  iHien  shall  be,  that  holy  Sabbath  day, 
Which  heavenly  care  shall  ever  keep  and  celebrste  alway. 
When  rest  is  found  for  weary  limbs,  when  labor  hath  reward. 
When  everything,  forevermors,  is  joyful  in  the  Lord? 

The  true  Jerusalem  above,  the  holy  town,  is  there, 
Whose  duties  are  so  full  of  joy,  whose  joy  so  free  from  osre; 
Where  disappointment  cometh  not  to  check  the  longing  hearty 
And  where  the  heart,  in  ecstasy,  hath  gained  her  better  part. 

O  glorious  King,  O  happy  state,  0  palace  of  the  blesti 

O  sacred  peace  and  holy  joy,  and  perfect  heavenly  resti 

To  thee  aspire  thy  citizens  in  glory's  bright  amy, 

And  what  they  feel  and  what  they  know,  they  strive  in  vain  to  say. 

For  while  we  wait  and  long  for  home,  it  shall  be  ours  to  raise 
Our  songs  and  chants  and  vows  and  prayers  in  that  dear  country's 
And  from  these  Babylonian  streams  to  lift  our  weary  eyes, 
And  view  the  city  that  we  love  descending  from  the  skies. 

There,  there,  secure  from  every  ill,  in  freedom  we  shall  sfaig 
The  songs  of  Zion,  hindered  here  by  days  of  suffering, 
And  unto  Thee,  our  gracious  Lord,  our  praises  shall  confess 
That  all  our  sorrow  hath  been  good,  and  Thou  by  pain  canst  blesi. 

There  Sabbsth  day  to  Sabbath  day  sheds  on  a  ceaseless  light, 
Eternal  pleasure  of  the  ssints  who  keep  that  Sabbath  bright; 
Nor  shall  the  chant  ineffable  decline,  nor  ever  cease, 
Which  we  with  all  the  angela  sing  in  that  sweet  realm  of  peace. 


IN  HIB  CONTBOTEBST  WITH  AB^ABO.  501 

to  be  permanently  restored,  and  there,  on  the  2l8t  of 
April,  A.  J>.  1142,  the  vivid,  eager,  and  restless  spirit, 
once  so  haughty  and  now  so  humble,  passed  from  the 
earth  to  other  realms.  Years  before  he  had  expressed 
the  wish  that  whenever  he  should  die  his  body  might 
be  buried  at  the  Paraclete,  to  be  surrounded  by  the 
prayers  of  H^loise  and  her  sisterhood.^  Thither,  there- 
fore, Peter  himself  conveyed  the  body  in  the  following 
November,  after  it  had  rested  for  a  time  at  St  Marcel, 
whose  monks  were  reluctant  to  give  it  up;  and  there 
twenty-two  years  after,  H^loise  herself,  dying  at  the 
same  age  of  sixty-three  years,  was  laid  near  him,  in 
the  same  crypt.  Three  hundred  years  after,  the  then 
abbess  of  the  Paraclete  had  the  remains  of  both  re- 
moved, and  buried  anew  at  the  foot  of  the  great  altar  of 
the  church.  Still  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  later,  by 
order  of  the  superior  of  the  convent,  the  bones,  which 
when  exhumed  were  still  undecayed,  were  placed  in  one 
double  cofBn,  and  entombed  in  the  chapel  of  the  Trin- 
ity, before  Uie  altar.  Even  the  fury  of  the  French 
Revolution,  which  in  a.  d.  1792  sold  the  convent  of  the 
Paraclete,  and  two  years  later  demolished  its  church, 
yet  respected  the  coffin  of  the  renowned  and  separated 
lovers,  whom  Death  alone  had  re-united.  Their  earthly 
remains  were  at  last  removed  to  Paris ;  and  seventy-five 
years  ago,  in  November  a.  d.  1817,  they  were  entombed 
again,  we  may  hope  for  the  last  time,  in  the  cemetery 
of  Pdre-Lachaise.     Votive  offerings  are  never  wanting 

^  Qnod  si  me  Dominnt  in  manibiu  inimiooram  tndiderit,  icilicet  at 
ipsi  pnBTalentes  me  interficiant,  ant  qnocunqae  casn  viam  imiTenB 
carnis  abaens  a  toUb  ingrediar  ;  cadaver  obieero  nostnun  nbienDqiiA  Tel 
•flfpaltam  rel  ezpocitniii  jacnerity  ad  cimiteriam  Testram  daferri  faoiatit, 
nbi  filte  noatns,  imo  in  Chriato  loiorMy  sepalchnim  nostrum  lepiaa 
Tidenteii  ad  praces  pro  me  Domino  fondendas  ampUoi  invitentor.  -^ 
Oftrot  ton.  L  ^ift  iii  ad  Heloiaflam^  p.  SI. 


502  BERNARD  OF  GLAIRYAUZ  : 

at  what  is  now  their  shrine ;  the  city  of  Paris  counts 
their  tomb  among  the  most  sacred  of  its  possessions; 
and  the  Greek  words,  AEI  STMnEnAEFMENOI, 
which  separate  yet  miite  their  names,  express  a  prayer 
which  all  may  offer  for  their  ashes  on  earth,  as  it  was 
offered  long  ago  for  their  spirits  on  high,  that  they 
may  be  "forever  miited." 

As  one  reviews  the  career  of  the  brilliant,  impetuons, 
and  unfortunate  Breton,  he  can  hardly  fail  to  be  im- 
pressed with  the  general  justice  of  the  judgment  of 
Cousin  —  certainly  no  theological  zealot  —  concerning 
the  two  eminent  men  whose  collision,  with  the  causes 
which  led  to  it,  it  has  seemed  needful  for  me  to  sketch. 
"  As  St  Bernard  represents, "  he  says,  "  the  conserva- 
tive spirit,  and  the  Christian  orthodoxy,  in  his  admira- 
ble good  sense,  his  depth  without  subtlety,  and  his 
pathetic  eloquence,  as  well  as  in  his  obscurities,  and 
his  sometimes  too  narrow  limitations,  so  equally  Ab£- 
lard  and  his  school  represent  in  a  manner  the  liberal 
and  innovating  side  of  the  time,  with  their  prcnnises 
often  fallacious,  and  their  inevitable  intermingling  of 
good  and  evil,  of  reason  and  extravagance. "  ^  Putting 
Ab^lard  by  the  side  of  Descartes,  as  beyond  dispute 
the  two  greatest  philosophers  whom  France  has  pro- 
duced, he  says  of  both  that  "  with  their  native  origi- 
nality, one  finds  a  disposition  to  admire  but  moderately 
what  had  been  done  before  them  or  was  being  done  by 
others  in  their  time,  an  independence  pushed  often  into 
a  quarrelsome  spirit,  confidence  in  tiieir  own  powers 
and  contempt  of  their  adversaries,  more  of  consistency 
than  of  solidity  in  their  opinions,  more  of  acuteness 
than  of  breadth,  more  of  energy  in  the  temper  of  spirit 
and  character  than  of  elevation  or  profoundness  of 

>  Oavnigos  InWti  d'Ab^lud  (Introdnetion),  pp.  czeU.,  oe. 


IN  HIS  COMTBOVEBST  WITH  ABJ^LABD.  608 

thought,  more  of  ingenious  contrivance  than  of  com- 
mon sense;  they  abound  in  individual  opinions,  in- 
stead of  rising  to  the  level  of  the  universal  reason,  are 
obstinate,  venturesome,  innovating,  revolutionarj. "  ^ 
Cousin  has  done  more  than  any  other  to  rescue  from 
forgetfulness  the  writings  of  Abtflard,  and  to  make 
them  again  familiar  to  readers.  As  a  critic  of  his 
work  he  is  friendly  and  discerning.  The  impression  of 
the  man  conveyed  in  these  sentences  is  that,  I  think, 
in  which  candid  students  will  generally  concur.  Even 
the  most  friendly  B^musat^  while  saying  that  the  scho- 
lastic philosophy  shows  no  name  greater  than  his  and 
agrees  to  date  its  origin  from  him,  describes  him  as 
not  a  great  man,  not  even  a  great  philosopher,  and  adds 
that  if  he  had  not  suffered  so  much,  and  if  his  tragical 
misfortunes  did  not  protect  his  memory,  one's  judg- 
ment of  him  might  be  more  severe ;  though,  he  adds, 
^  we  need  not  mourn  too  much  for  his  sad  life ;  he  lived 
in  keen  suffering,  and  he  died  in  humiliation,  but  he 
had  his  glory,  and  he  was  beloved.''* 

His  work  may  have  seemed  to  others  at  the  time, 
possibly  to  himself  to  have  been  disastrously  ended 
with  his  death ;  but  it  really  was  not  He  had  searched 
rapidly  along  veins  in  which  subsequent  explorers  found 
greater  riches.  His  History  of  his  Calamities  has 
missed  the  fame  of  Augustine's  Confessions,  or  of  Rous- 
seau's, to  both  of  which  it  has  been  compared.  His  phil- 
osophical speculations  and  theological  doctrines  never 
formed  a  coherent  system,  attracting  many  followers, 
and  exerting  upon  the  mind  of  students  commanding 

1  OnTiages  InMits  d'AMlud  (Introduction),  pp.  ir.,  r. 

*  Que  M  Tie  oependint,  qa«  sa  trista  vie  ne  ninit  la  fSuN  pii  trap 
pkiodn :  il  Ttot  dam  Tuigoiflw  el  moanit  dans  llinmiliationy  mala  Q 
•Ql  da  la  ^TO  at  II  fit  aSm^  —  Fii  iT^Mtoni;  torn.  L  pp.  87i*S7i. 


604  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBVAUZ: 

influence.  But  his  eager  and  restless  philosophical 
spirit  was  as  needful  in  its  place,  to  the  Church  and  to 
the  world,  as  was  the  contemplative  devoutness  of  Ber- 
nard. It  had  in  it  an  equal  persistency  of  life.  Monas- 
ticism  nourished  both  the  tendencies ;  and  the  mystical 
theology  needed  always  the  sharp  rigor  of  independent 
logical  analysis  exercised  upon  it,  to  correct  and  com- 
plete it.  Ab^lard  had  wrought  with  greater  effect  than 
he  probably  knew.  The  subsequent  crusades  familiar- 
ized the  mind  of  western  Europe  with  Aristotle  and 
his  methods;  and  scholasticism,  which  had  been  at 
first  the  mere  servant  of  a  traditional  theology,  became 
more  and  more  its  companion  and  its  interpreter. 
Peter  Lombard,  the  Master  of  Sentences,  who  had  been 
a  pupil  of  Ab^lard,  followed  in  a  measure  at  leasts  his 
method  in  his  collection  and  exposition  of  the  state- 
ments of  the  Fathers,  which  became  a  chief  theological 
manual  of  the  latter  part  of  the  twelfth  century,  and 
the  model  for  many  which  followed.  Many  commen- 
taries were  written  upon  it ;  and  it  was  one  of  the  first 
books  to  be  multiplied  by  the  press  when  the  movable 
type  had  been  discovered.  Thomas  Aquinas,  in  the  sub- 
sequent century,  whose  '^Summa  Theologi®"  secured 
and  maintained  the  highest  renown  in  the  universities 
of  Europe  and  with  the  papal  court,  treated  theology  as 
the  product  of  the  union  of  philosophy  with  religion, 
and  accommodated,  far  more  perfectly  than  Ab^lard  had 
done,  the  logic  of  Aristotle  to  the  doctrines  of  the 
Church.  The  influence  of  the  methods  of  Ab^lard  may 
be  traced  more  widely  than  his  opinions,  and  his  ten- 
dency has  survived  in  communities  and  in  centuries  to 
which  his  writings  have  been  quite  unknown. 

As  we  think  of  him  in  his  relations  to  the  abbot  of 
Clairvaux  we  may  confidently  believe  that  while  they 


IN  HIS  OONTBOTEBST  WITH  AB&IBD.  505 

never  might  have  been  able  to  Bee  eye  to  eye  in  their 
contemplation  of  the  problems  of  theology,  as  presented 
in  their  time,  they  did  attain  a  perfect  harmony  when 
passing  beyond  the  mortal  limitations ;  that  with  both, 
the  heat  of  piety  and  the  colder  if  clearer  light  of  spec- 
ulation united  at  last  in  the  instant  and  perfect  vision 
of  Ood.  And  certainly  we  know  that  the  special  im- 
pulses represented  by  either,  perhaps  represented  ex- 
travagantly by  either,  have  been  combined  ever  since, 
and  will  be  to  the  end,  in  the  historic  development  of 
the  Church. 

Tendencies  which  start  from  different  points  and 
move  apart,  following  independent  lines  and  seemingly 
seeking  different  conclusions,  are  not  of  necessity  an- 
tagonistic, but  are  often  in  the  end  combined  for  greater 
common  power  and  effect  The  physical  parable  of  this 
was  familiar  in  regions  which  Bernard  and  Ab^lard 
knew.  The  river  Rhone,  after,  with  sudden  turn  north- 
ward at  Martigny,  it  has  flung  its  waters  into  and 
through  the  Lake  of  Geneva,  and  issuing  thence  in  its 
arrowy  course  has  absorbed  the  turbid  Arve  in  its  blue 
waters,  strikes  the  Jura,  and  forces  its  way  through 
rocky  gorges,  channelled  and  pierced  by  its  velocity, 
into  the  valley  which  leads  to  Lyons.  There  the  Sa6ne, 
which  has  had  its  own  rough  cradle  in  the  Yosges,  and 
has  followed  without  pause  its  separate  course,  is  merged 
in  the  Rhone,  to  seek  the  sea,  blended  with  it  in  peaceful 
current.  Somewhat  in  like  manner  the  swift  and  strong 
stream  of  devotion,  which  swept  northward  from  Italy 
into  Germany  and  France,  and  which,  though  sullied 
by  the  animal  force  and  the  sensual  spirit  that  there 
mingled  with  it,  retained  in  part  its  heavenly  hue, 
and  had  impulse  and  strength  to  cut  its  way  through 
all  existing  and  resisting  establishments  of  barbaric 


506  BERNARD  OF  CLAntYAUZ. 

power,  was  joined  at  length  in  central  France  by  the 
later  stream  of  scholastic  inquiry.  Together,  in  inter- 
mingling currents,  thenceforth  they  ran,  between  banks 
which  blossomed  more  and  more  with  products  of  charity, 
fruits  of  thought,  as  valleys  bloom  with  com  and  wine. 
Together  may  they  continue  to  run,  until  for  each  of  us 
as  persons,  and  for  all  communities  of  Christianized 
men,  the  deepening  volume  of  spiritual  feeling  and  the 
brightening  successions  of  unconstrained  thought  shall 
have  found  at  last  their  perfect  rest  in  the  Heavenly 
Sea,  whose  crystal  calm  is  mixed  with  fire! 


LECTURE  Vm. 

BEBNARD  OF  CLAmVAUX:  IN  HIS  BELATION  TO 
GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS. 


LECTURE  VIIL 

BERNARD  OF  OIiAmYAUZ:  IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL 

EUROPEAN  AFFAIR& 

m  a  brilliant  passage  in  the  twentieth  chapter  of  his 
History  of  England  Lord  Macaulay  presents  what  he 
esteems  a  signal  illustration  of  the  progress  of  modem 
civilization,  measuring  that  progress  by  the  estimate 
which  the  world  now  puts  upon  mental  force  as  dis- 
tinguished from  physical,  the  sovereignty  which  it  assigns 
to  the  inspiring  soul  rather  than  to  the  trained  and  power- 
f ul  body.  He  is  contrasting  William  of  Orange,  then  king 
of  England,  and  the  Duke  of  Luxemburg,  then  marshid 
of  France,  with  other  leaders  of  historical  hosts.  ^^  At 
Landen,"  he  says,  ^^  two  poor,  sickly  beings,  who,  in  a  rude 
state  of  society,  would  have  been  regarded  as  too  puny 
to  bear  any  part  in  combats,  were  the  souls  of  two  great 
armies.  In  some  heathen  countries  they  would  have 
been  exposed  while  infants.  In  Christendom  they  would, 
six  hundred  years  earlier,  have  been  sent  to  some  quiet 
cloister.  But  their  lot  had  fallen  on  a  time  when  men 
had  discovered  that  the  strength  of  the  muscles  is  far  in- 
ferior in  value  to  the  strength  of  the  mind.  It  is  prob- 
able that  among  the  120,000  soldiers  who  were  marshalled 
around  Neerwinden,  under  all  the  standards  of  western 
Europe,  the  two  feeblest  in  body  were  the  hunchbacked 


510  BEBNAAD  OF  GLAXBYAUX  : 

dwarf  who  ui^ed  forward  the  fiery  onset  of  Franoe,  and 
the  asthmatic  skeleton  who  covered  the  slow  retreat  of 
England."  i 

Certainly,  this  is  vigorously  put ;  and  the  characteristic 
elegance  and  force  of  the  statement  may  perhaps  beguile 
one,  as  sometimes  happens  in  reading  Macaulay,  to  the 
acceptance  of  a  conclusion  which  would  hardly  be  en- 
tirely just  to  the  earlier  time.    It  is  by  no  means  to  be 
admitted  that  bodily  size  or  muscular  strength  had  al- 
ways been  requisite  in  the  preceding  centuries,  CTon  in 
celebrated  leaders  of  troops.    The  father  of  Charlemagne 
was  strong  enough,  we  know,  but  so  humble  in  stature  as 
to  take  from  that  his  historical  surname.    It  was  not  the 
splendid  knight  Dunois,  it  was  not  any  chivalrous  man 
trained  in  tournaments  and  accustomed  to  battle,  it  was 
a  slight  girl  of  eighteen  years,  who  held  the  standard  by 
the  side  of  Charles  Seventh  when  he  was  crowned,  a.  d. 
1429,  in  the  majestic  cathedral  of  Bheims ;  and  yet  that 
girl,  known  in  history  as  Jeanne  d'Arc,  had  been  the 
animating  soul  of  the  armies  which  once  and  again  had 
swept  the  powerful  invading  forces  out  of  his  path,  and 
opened  the  way  to  that  important  coronation.    Charles 
Eighth  of  France  was  by  no  means  a  man  of  the  first,  or 
perhaps  of  the  second  order;  but  when  we  remember 
that  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  without  previous  experi- 
ence in  war,  and  against  the  advice  of  veteran  command- 
ers, he  crossed  the  Alps,  marched  through  Italy,  swept 
Rome  into  his  grasp,  entered  Naples  in  triumph  and 
alarmed  the  Ottoman  Empire,  and  that  the  next  year 
he  lifted  his  cannon  over  the  Apennines,  and  with  less 
than  ten  thousand  troops  gave  summary  defeat  to  an 
Italian  army  of  forty  thousand,  we  read  with  surprise 
that  he  was  *^  short,  badly  built,  with  blank-looking  eyes, 

^  Workiy  Yol.  iv.  p.  24.    London  ed.,  1878. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUBOPEAM  AFFAIB8.      511 

thick  lips  everlastingly  open,  nervous  twitchings  dis- 
agreeable to  see,  and  a  very  slow  speech."  ^ 

Even  the  sense  of  sight,  apparently  indispensable  to 
military  commanders,  has  not  always  been  possessed  by 
the  famously  successful,  and  infirmities  of  old  age  have 
by  no  means  debarred  them  from  astonishing  victory. 
It  was  a  man  half-blind  from  his  youth,  and  wholly  blind 
in  his  later  years,  who  proved  himself  first  of  engineers 
and  greatest  of  generals  in  the  early  part  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  who  is  said  to  have  won  fifteen  pitched  battles, 
with  more  than  a  hundred  different  engagements,  who 
achieved  the  most  remarkable  of  his  victories  when  he 
could  see  nothing  whatever,  and  who  made  the  name  of 
the  Hussite  Ziska  terribly  famous  in  central  Europe. 
And  it  was  the  blind  Doge  Dandolo,  bearing  the  weight 
of  almost  a  hundred  years,  who  at  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century  stormed  Constantinople,  himself  the 
first  to  leap  from  galley  to  shore,  displayii^  the  stand- 
ard of  Saint  Mark,  and  giving  signal  triumph  to  the 
Crusaders. 

The  instances,  therefore,  have  by  no  means  been  8ol> 
itary  in  which  men  have  accomplished  gp*eat  military 
achievements  in  spite  of  physical  disadvantages;  and  it 
was  not  quite  true  that  up  to  the  year  a.  d.  1698,  the 
date  of  the  battle  which  Macaulay  was  describing,  men 
personally  infirm  had  not  animated  great  armies.  But 
six  hundred  years  before  that,  the  historian  particularly 
says,  one  wanting  in  bodily  vigor  would  have  been  re- 
mitted to  some  quiet  monastery.  Six  hundred  years 
carry  us  ahnost  exactly  to  the  birth  of  Bernard,  in  A.  D.  • 
1091.  He  was  devoted,  it  is  true,  not  more  by  his 
mother  than  by  his  own  culture  of  piety,  to  the  monastic 
life.    He  was  afterward  as  frail  as  he  was  beautiful  in  his 

^  Onixot,  Hiitoiy  of  France,  toL  iiL  p.  SSl. 


512  BEBNASD  OF  CLAIBVAUX  : 

physical  frame.  The  spirit  hardly  promised  at  times  to 
continue  attached  to  the  attenuated  body ;  while  to  the 
end  of  his  life  it  might  have  been  said  of  him,  as  it  was 
afterward  said  of  F^nelon,  that  '^it  required  an  effort 
to  cease  looking  at  him."  He  was  frequently  unable  for 
days  to  take  any  food,  fie  almost  never  took  it  except 
under  the  sense  of  necessity,  to  keep  the  spark  of  phys- 
ical life  from  wholly  going  out ;  and  there  was  not  a  stal- 
wart man-at-arms  in  the  fortress  of  any  feudal  noble,  or 
in  the  train  of  any  knight,  who  would  have  found  more 
difficulty  in  killing  him,  with  lance  or  sabre,  or  with  a 
buffet  of  the  gauntleted  fist,  than  he  would  himself  have 
found  in  breaking  a  tendril  from  a  branch  of  the  vine 
which  encompassed  his  arbor.  But  even  then  the  strength 
of  the  mind  so  far  surpassed  the  strength  of  the  muscle 
that  that  infirm  man  ruled  Europe,  from  the  arbor  and 
the  cell.  Not  tasting  the  difference  between  wine  and 
oil,  he  elected  popes,  and  with  his  delicate  hand  guided 
md  governed  the  counsels  of  monarchs.  Secluded  in 
the  valley  of  Clairvaux,  which  his  commanding  person- 
ality had  made  the  real  centre  of  Christendom,  he 
marked  out  the  policies  of  priesthoods  and  princes ;  and 
as  nothing  can  well  be  imagined  more  fragile  than  his 
frame,  or  more  ethereal  than  his  physical  presence,  so 
nothing  can  be  conceived  in  the  Europe  of  that  time 
more  controlling  than  his  genius,  more  supreme  than  his 
fame.  It  is  one  of  the  sharpest  contrasts  in  history  — 
this,  between  the  infirmity  of  the  body  which  a  rough 
wind  seemed  sufficient  to  destroy,  and  the  spiritual  com- 
mand to  which  nations  bowed.  In  the  most  exciting  and 
strenuous  debates,  his  voice,  like  a  superior  music,  dom- 
inated and  stilled  into  concert  with  itself  the  confused 
clamors  which  vexed  the  air.  When  king's  counsellors 
were  determining  their  plans,  he  shaped  or  over-rode 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GSNEBAL  BUBOP£AN  AFFAIB8.      613 

ihem,  as  summer  winds  push  back  the  ice-bank,  and 
turn  it  into  rippling  rills.  As  toward  the  military 
powers  of  the  time  his  spirit  appeared  as  flame  toward 
iron,  an  evanescent  aerial  force  against  shining  hard- 
ness of  damaskeened  mail.  But  the  iron  swiftly  melted 
or  bent  at  the  touch  of  the  flame,  and  could  no  more 
withstand  the  ardor  of  his  onset  than  piles  of  brush  can 
conquer  fire.  Certainly  the  age  was  not  wholly  bar- 
barous, according  to  the  standard  which  Macaulay  pre- 
sents, in  which  a  contrast  so  illustrious,  between  that 
which  was  moral  and  that  which  was  physical,  had  be- 
come possible. 

To  present  imperfectly  one  or  two  instances  of  the 
extraordinary  power  thus  exercised  by  Bernard  is  my 
purpose  this  evening ;  and  with  them  this  series  of  out- 
line sketches  of  the  man  and  his  work  will  come  to  its 
close. 

Of  course  it  will  be  noticed  that  he  had  opportunities, 
peculiar  to  his  time,  for  putting  large  force  into  public 
action,  by  animating  or  guiding  the  minds  of  men.  The 
first  lectures  of  this  series  had  it  for  their  purpose  to 
make  this  evident  from  the  start.  Ecclesiastical  forces 
were  in  his  time  predominant  throughout  Europe,  —  mak- 
ing such  appeals  to  the  general  feeling  and  judgment  of 
peoples,  and  having  inherited  such  compact  and  con- 
trolling  forms  of  organization,  as  had  not  been  wholly 
paralleled  before,  as  have  not  been  surpassed  in  the  fol- 
lowing generations.  And  it  was  over  these  forces,  in- 
corporate in  great  and  effective  religious  institutions, 
that  Bernard  exerted  his  primary  control.  He  touched 
thus  the  centres  of  Continental  energy ;  and  the  power 
which  was  behind  armies  and  camps,  the  power  which 
limited  and  directed  State-movements,  and  which  was 
equally  at  home  in  the  castle  and  the  cottage^  in  the 

d8 


614  BBNABD  OF  GLAIBYAUZ  : 

halls  of  the  schools,  the  cells  of  monks,  and  the  pleas- 
ure-chambers of  palaces,  —  this  was  the  power  which 
hands  as  dainty  and  transparent  as  his  could  graap 
and  guide. 

Then  it  is  to  be  observed  that  all  parts  of  Europe 
were  at  that  time  open,  as  they  have  hardly  been  since, 
certainly  not  for  centuries  past,  to  the  regulating  influ- 
ence of  any  one  man  who  was  capable  of  using  fit  in- 
struments to  a£fect  them.  There  was  one  language  for 
educated  men:  the  language  of  the  liturgies,  of  the 
famous  writings  of  the  western  Fathers,  of  the  classical 
writers,  who  were  even  then  widely  read.  In  this  lan- 
guage laws,  charters,  wills,  all  sorts  of  instruments  for 
public  record,  were  commonly  written.  In  this  language 
philosophical  discussions  were  conducted,  letters  were 
penned,  sermons  were  preached,  and  educated  minds  in 
all  departments  came  to  conference  with  each  other. 
Whoever  freely  wrote  and  spoke  the  Latin  tongue  had 
therefore  access  to  multitudes  of  persons,  comparatively 
cultured  and  influential,  in  different  nations,  as  if  he 
had  addressed  them  in  their  vernacular. 

It  is  obvious  also,  that,  partly  by  reason  of  this  preva- 
lence of  one  literary  language,  national  distinctions  were 
at  that  time  by  no  means  so  prominent  in  men's  thought 
as  they  came  to  be  later ;  so  that  those  who  recognized 
an  ecumenical  Church,  with  all  lands  for  its  realm,  lis- 
tened to  the  voice  of  a  Doctor  in  that  Church,  whether 
he  were  German,  Italian,  or  French,  almost  as  if  he  had 
been  of  their  neighborhood.  The  universality  of  the 
Church,  in  other  words,  gave  universality  to  the  utter- 
ance of  those  who  argued  with  energy,  who  stirred  men's 
minds  with  impassioned  appeal,  or  who  spoke  with  author- 
ity, from  its  connected  though  distributed  centres. 

We  shall  recognize  this  feature  of  the  time  more  dis* 


IN  HIS  BBLATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.      515 

tinctly,  perhaps,  if  we  bring  to  comparison  with  Bernard 
another  man,  also  a  distinguished  teacher  and  leader  in 
Ohnrch  and  State,  of  five  hundred  years  later :  I  mean 
him  who  is  known  in  history  as  the  famous  and  powerful 
Bishop  of  Meaux.  Like  Bernard,  Bossuet,  you  remember, 
was  a  Burgundian,  bom  at  Dijon,  a.  d.  1627,  of  a  family 
distinguished  for  success  not  so  much  in  arms  as  in  the 
study  and  practice  of  law.  Like  Bernard,  he  was  de- 
voted with  enthusiasm  in  early  youth  to  the  reading  of 
the  Scriptures ;  and  like  him,  though  for  longer  periods 
of  time,  he  resorted  to  celebrated  schools,  to  perfect 
himself  in  literary,  philosophical,  and  theological  studies. 
His  fellow-students  and  his  teachers  were  alike  surprised 
by  the  variety,  rapidity,  and  energy  of  his  genius,  and  he 
was  already  famous  in  studious  circles  before,  at  the  age 
of  twenty*five,  he  was  ordained  to  the  priesthood.  His 
earliest  controversial  work,  and  one  of  his  acutest,  was 
published  when  he  was  twenty-eight ;  ^  and  before  he  had 
reached  middle  life  he  was  the  most  attractive  and  cele- 
brated preacher  in  the  French  capital.  Indeed,  his  fame 
as  a  preacher  was  then,  and  has  to  a  great  extent  con- 
tinued to  be,  unique  among  those  who  occupied  the  pul- 
pits of  his  time ;  so  that  a  careful  editor  of  his  '^  Funeral 
Orations,"  following  Voltaire,  does  not  hesitate  to  declare 
him  the  only  really  eloquent  man  of  the  age  of  Louis  Four- 
teenth.'   He  was  almost  as  devoted  to  works  of  charity 

1  Rdfatation  da  oftt^hiiime  da  diear  Pbal  Ferry,  ndaistre  de  1*  relig- 
ion pritendae  i^form^  per  Jacqaee-B^nigne  Boaeaety  chenoine  et  grand 
archidiacre  en  Tegliae  cath^drale  de  Metz.    Metz,  Jean-Antoine,  1655. 

'  On  a  dit  de  Boesnet  qae  c'^toit  le  seal  homme  rraiment  Eloquent 
•ova  le  ahcle  de  Lonia  XIV.  Ce  jagement  parottra  sans  doate  extraordi- 
naire ;  niais  si  T^loquenoe  consUte  et  seq,  .  .  .  si  tel  est  le  caiactire  de  la 
anblime  Eloquence,  qai  paraii  noos  a  jamais  M  aossi  ^loqaent  qae  Bossaet  t 
-^  Bxajnen  det  oraitona/urUbres  ;  (Euvres  chovries.     Paris,  1821. 

Voltaire  speaks  often  of  Boesnet,  and  especially  of  the  "  Faneral  Ora- 


616  HEBHAKD  OV  CLAIBYAUX  : 

as  Benuird  had  been ;  and  he  had  a  far  hi^er  titular 
place  among  the  clergy  of  hia  time.  He  was  not  a  monk, 
but  a  principal  bishop,  preceptor  of  the  prince,  member 
of  the  Academy,  Coimaellor  of  State,  always  a  prime 
favorite  at  Court.  He  had  of  course  a  &r  larger 
knowledge  of  history  and  of  philosophy  than  Bernard 
ever  had;  and  he  wrote  as  well  as  preached,  largely, 
eloquently,  on  themes  of  doctrinal  and  of  practical  re- 
ligion, for  the  maintenance  of  Christianity  as  interpreted 
by  him,  in  criticism  of  opinions  within  the  Church  which 
differed  from  his  own,  and  m  ingenious  and  powerful 
assault  on  the  schemes  of  religion  which  departed  es- 
sentially from  the  Church-doctrine.  Through  the  vast 
augmentation  of  royal  authority,  in  the  hands  of  tiie 
magnificent  monarch  who  admired  him,  he  had  a  reach  of 
opportunity  within  the  kingdom  which  not  even  Bernard 
had  ever  enjoyed ;  and  he  had  of  course  the  enormous 
advantage  of  the  tireless  printing-press,  to  multiply  with 
accuracy,  and  with  incessant  rapidity,  the  copies  of  what* 
ever  he  wrote.  He  was  personally  instrumental  in  the 
conversion  of  many  principal  persons  to  the  faith  which 

tioss,"  in  a  tone  of  admiiation  quite  unfamiliar  to  his  critical  and  aeoffing 
ipirit,  aa  in  instances  like  these  : — 

J'admire  d'autant  plus  qnelqnes  oiaisons  fan^bres  du  sahUme  Boasnet, 
qu'elles  n'ont  point  en  de  module  dans  Tantiqait^  ...  II  eat  ttbi  qne 
dans  oette  oraison  [on  Turenne]  Fishier  4gala  presque  le  sublime  BosBuet» 
que  j'ai  appeU  et  que  j*appelle  encore  le  seul  homme  Eloquent  parmi  tant 
d'^rains  il^gants.  .  .  .  L'ezag^ration  s'est  r^fagi^e  dans  les  cnaisons 
fun^bres ;  on  s'attend  toujoun  k  Ty  trouver,  on  ne  regarde  jamais  cea  pikes 
d^loquence  que  comme  des  declamstions  ;  c'est  done  un  grand  merite  dans 
Bossuet  d'avoir  su  attendrir  et  emouYoir  dans  un  genre  qui  semble  Cut 
pour  ennuyer.  .  .  .  Bossuet  ayant  k  tndter,  dans  ToTsiaon  fun^lnti  du 
grand  Cond4,  Tarticle  de  ses  guerres  civiles,  dit  qu*il  y  a  une  patience 
aussi  glorieuse  que  Tinnocence  m6me.  11  manie  ce  moroeau  habilement,  et 
dans  le  rests  il  parle  avec  grandeur.  —  Voltaibx  :  CSw/ru  CbmpUta^ 
torn.  y.  269 ;  vii.  682,  660,  671.    Paris  ed.,  1877. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.      617 

he  upheld,  against  which  they  or  their  fathers  had  re- 
Tolted,  while  he  was  as  active  as  had  been  before  the 
abbot  of  Clairvaux  in  resisting  tendencies  within  the 
Church  which  seemed  to  him  to  threaten  its  peace,  or  to 
obstruct  its  just  advancement.  He  stood  in  determined 
oppcmition  toward  the  excessive  claims  of  the  papacy ; 
and  for  this  reason  one  of  his  books,  posthumously  pub- 
lished, had  the  honor  of  being  put  upon  the  Index 
of  books  prohibited,  by  a  successor  of  the  pontiffs 
whose  faith  he  had  defended  but  whose  ambition  he 
had  checked.^ 

A  great  preacher,  a  great'Theologian,  a  great  contro- 
versialist, a  companion  of  scholars  and  of  statesmen, 
endeared  to  the  poor  by  his  beneficence,  yet  a  friend 
and  confidant  of  the  autocratic  king  whose  splendid  fame 
dazzled  the  Continent,  the  idol  of  the  Church  whose  na- 
tional liberties  he  powerfully  protected,  applauded  while 
feared  by  the  highest  Roman  authorities,  —  he  was,  as 
Guizot,  the  steadfast  protestant,  has  truly  said,  ^^  the  no- 
blest type  of  the  finest  period  of  the  Catholic  Church  in 
France."  *  Ftfnelon,  whose  cherished  convictions  he  vic- 
toriously opposed,  never  ceased  to  admire  both  his  genius 
and  his  spirit.  Oibbon  became^for  a  time  a  Roman  Catho- 
lic, through  the  impression  received  from  his  books.*   He 

^  Defensio  Declarationia  celeberrimn  qaam  potesUte  eccletiflstica  sanzit 
Clenu  Gftllicanua,  19  Martii,  1682,  a  J-B^n.  Boaauet  .  .  .  ez  speciali 
juasa  LndoTiei  Magni  acripta. '  Lnzembargi,  Andreaa  Cheyalier,  1780. 

*  Hiat  of  Franoe,  toL  t.  p.  585. 

*  The  two  books  which  influenoed  Oibbon  were,  the  "  Expoaitioii  da  la 
doctrine  de  I'^liae  caiholique,*'  and  the  "  Hiatoire  dea  variationa  da 
r^lise  proteatante." 

Theae  works,  aaya  Gibbon,  "aehioTed  mj  conTersion,  and  I  aarely 
fell  bj  a  noble  hand.  I  have  ainoe  examined  the  originab  with  a  mora 
discerning  eye,  and  shaU  not  heaitate  to  prononnoe  that  Boaanet  ia  indeed 
a  master  of  all  the  weapona  of  etmttoYeny.'* ^ Mtnurin  o/m^  lAf^^  HiM, 
^Decline  and  FM,  yoL  i.  p.  86.    London,  1854. 


518  BBBNARD  OP  CLAIBTAUX  : 

had  the  French  language  in  its  brilliant  matnriiy  for  tiie 
ample  and  flexible  instrument  of  his  thought;  and  he 
wrote  in  it  with  an  exact  and  copious  elegance  which 
Voltaire  never  equalled,  and  which  Blaise  Pascal  never 
surpassed.  It  was  not  unnatural  that  while  he  lived 
he  should  have  been  esteemed  the  chief  ornament  and 
champion  of  the  Church  in  France ;  that  when  he  died 
it  should  have  seemed  to  bishops  and  to  the  Oourt  that 
the  pre-eminent  light  of  the  kingdom  had  been  extin* 
guished, — that  the  pulpit,  the  academy,  the  synod  and 
the  palace,  had  lost  the  strong  and  decorated  column  on 
which  their  hopes  had  been  steadfastly  stayed. 

But  his  vast  power  was,  after  all^  almost  wholly  local 
in  its  range  of  operation.  It  was  limited  in  direct  exer- 
tion to  his  own  kingdom,  and  only  incidentally  affected 
others,  though  the  France  of  his  time  had  become  im- 
mensely more  prominent  in  Europe  than  it  had  been  in 
the  earlier  centuries.  International  distinctions  had  be- 
come also  more  prominent,  and  in  their  effect  more 
sharply  divisive ;  and  the  England  of  Cromwell's  day,  or 
afterward  of  Charles  Second,  James  Second,  and  William 
Third,  the  Germany  of  Leopold,  the  Holland  of  John 
De  Witt  and  after,  the  Spain  of  Charles  Second,  took 
almost  no  impression  from  the  genius  and  learning,  the 
action  and  the  spirit,  of  the  most  distinguished  church- 
man in  France.  In  some  important  relations  Bernard 
and  Bossuet  are  always  associated  in  the  memory  of 
students ;  and  the  influence  of  the  latter,  both  religious 
and  literary,  is  to-day  undoubtedly  the  more  sensibly 
recognized.  But  their  power,  and  even  their  celebrity, 
in  the  Europe  of  their  respective  periods,  were  by  no 
means  equal ;  since  Bossuet  lacked,  in  his  later  position, 
the  peculiar  Continental  opportunities  which  Bernard  had 
possessed. 


IN  HI8  RELATION  TO  OENSRAL  KUBOPBAN  AFFAIRB.     519 

This  existence  of  a  common  language  among  educated 
men,  with  this  absence  of  the  sharp  international  distinc- 
tions which  afterward  defined  and  segregated  peoples,  are 
important  to  be  noted,  as  giving  a  partial  mechanical 
explanation  to  the  singular  influence  of  the  abbot  of 
Glainraux.  But  of  course,  after  all,  the  vital  explanation 
is  in  his  remarkable  personality,  —  the  strange  combina- 
tion of  inspiring,  guiding,  and  governing  forces  which 
appeared  in  his  mind,  his  character,  and  his  life.  These 
alone  gave  him  the  prominence  and  the  control  which 
no  exterior  advantages  could  have  conferred,  and  which 
other  men,  more  distinguished  in  position  and  with  the 
same  opportunities,  wholly  failed  to  achieve  or  to  attempt. 

He  was  related,  as  I  have  shown,  to  all  classes  of  so- 
ciety, touching  with  equal  closeness  its  extremes:  the 
rich  and  noble  through  his  own  noble  and  martial 
lineage,  the  poor  and  dependent  through  his  lifelong 
acceptance  of  a  voluntary  poverty,  and  his  spontaneous 
and  a£Fectionate  sympathy  toward  those  without  earthly 
advantage.  His  eloquence  moved  the  multitudes,  while 
his  chivalrous  daring,  surpassing  that  of  the  disciplined 
soldier,  impressed  the  rudest  or  haughtiest  baron ;  his 
knowledge  and  counsel  were  freely  accessible  to  the 
most  obscure  monk,  his  large  views  of  public  affairs 
gave  light  to  statesmen,  while  the  sweetness,  sincerity, 
and  dignity  of  his  character,  his  prayerful  piety  and 
unswerving  consecration,  won  the  admiration  of  the 
most  God-fearing  and  devout  No  man,  therefore, 
could  have  been  more  perfectly  adapted,  in  himself  and 
in  the  conditions  of  his  life,  to  attract  the  attention  and 
compel  the  homage  of  both  castle  and  cottage ;  while 
those  who  had  thought,  if  such  there  were,  to  find  in 
him  only  a  mystical  dreamer,  a  contemplative  recluse, 
with  his  soul  absorbed  in  Scriptural  study,  or  detached 


520  BEBNABD  OP  CLAmYAUX  : 


from  the  earth  in  spiritual  raptures,  found  him  a  man 
of  a  practical  sagacity  surpassing  their  own,  and  of  an 
intense  and  vehement  energy  beside  which  theirs  was 
superficial. 

AH  this,  however,  would  not  have  given  him  his  great 
place  in  Europe  except  for  his  unceasing  interest  in 
public  affairs,  and  his  clear  and  strong  sense  of  the  re- 
lation sustained  by  that  administration  of  them  which 
to  him  seemed  desirable  to  the  furtherance  of  the  in- 
terests of  righteousness  and  truth.  Without  the  slightest 
disposition  to  thrust  himself  forward,  he  was  never  one 
who  dwelt  apart,  and  who  left  grave  matters  in  Church  or 
State  to  take  their  course.  His  activity  in  their  guid- 
ance, whenever  he  came  in  contact  with  them,  was  con- 
stant and  surprising.  It  would  have  been  surprising  in 
any  man  ;  it  was  more  so  in  one  so  frail  of  body,  and  so 
supremely  engaged  in  the  instruction  and  discipline  of 
religion.  And  when  in  carrying  on  this  large  part  of  his 
work  he  encountered  men,  either  for  quiet  interchange 
of  opinion,  or  for  resisting  and  reversing  the  judgments 
and  the  preferences  which  antagonized  his  own,  he  met 
them  with  a  power  which  seemed  sometimes  to  approach 
the  miraculous.  No  summary  of  particulars,  in  his  pnb- 
lic  station  or  his  personal  force,  no  patient  analysis 
of  the  recorded  effects,  seem  to  give  full  account  of 
such  effects.  I  have  already  presented  instances,  in  the 
tremendous  impression  made  by  him  on  William  of 
Aquitaine,  and  on  Conrad  of  Germany ;  and  these,  though 
conspicuous,  were  by  no  means  singular  in  his  modest, 
fearless,  commanding  life.  What  is  true  in  mechanics 
seamed  shown  by  him  to  be  equally  true  in  the  depart- 
ment of  moral  energy.  The  velocity  of  his  onset,  mul- 
tiplying the  weight  which  belonged  to  his  thought  and  in- 
hered in  his  character,  measured  the  momentum  of  hia 


IN  HIS  BEULTION  TO  OBNBRAL  EimOPEAN   APPAIB8.     521 

personal  impact  on  the  minds  and  wills  which  opposed 
his  own.  At  last  men  came,  therefore,  to  expect  his 
snccess,  even  when  his  controversy  was  to  be  with  them- 
selves, as  very  probably  Ab^lard  did  at  the  Council  of 
Sens.  They  either  fled  from  his  approach,  as  did  the 
nobles  at  Metz  of  whom  I  have  before  briefly  spoken,  as 
did  the  women  in  his  early  life  who  hid  husbands  and 
sons  to  keep  them  out  of  the  reach  of  his  discourse,  or 
else  they  had  already  half  submitted  when  they  con- 
sented to  see  his  face.  Except  in  rare  cases  there  was 
nothing  dictatorial  or  imperious  in  his  bearing.  But  the 
subtile  and  stimulating  energy  of  his  spirit,  his  inten- 
sity of  conviction,  his  impassioned  emotion,  when  ut> 
tered  in  the  eager  music  of  his  words,  and  on  his 
thrilling  and  fascinating  tones,  captivated  and  con- 
quered, with  a  certainty  which  seemed  like  the  certainty 
in  operation  of  a  natural  law. 

Even  where  he  could  not  go  himself,  he  reached  and 
moved  men  with  marvellous  effect  through  his  letters. 
I  have  spoken  already  of  his  large  correspondence,  from 
which  hundreds  of  his  letters  remain  to  us ;  and  these 
letters  are  full,  to  an  extraordinary  degree,  of  the  same 
properties  which  we  elsewhere  discern  in  his  spirit  and 
mind.  In  this  respect  they  certainly  surpass  the  reports 
or  the  fragments  of  his  sermons  which  are  left  These 
are  sometimes  disappointing:  eddying  around,  instead 
of  flowing  onward ;  attracting  the  half-indifferent  at* 
tention  of  the  reader  to  temporary  conceits,  rather  than 
stirring  his  soul  with  the  urgent  impression  of  some 
momentous,  magisterial  theme.  But  I  know  of  no  letter- 
writer  who,  in  essential  motive  force  suffusing  and  im- 
pressing the  appeals  of  his  pen,  has  been  his  superior; 
while  they  to  whom  his  letters  went,  prepared  to  be  af- 
fected by  them  through  their  knowledge  of  himself,  and 


J 


522  BERNARD  OP  CLAIRTAUX: 

reading  them  no  doubt  with  a  deliberate  carefulneas  nn- 
known  in  our  timOi  were  almoat  as  generally  subjected 
to  his  mind  when  thus  expressed  as  if  he  had  been  in 
presence  with  them.  It  may  not  be  wholly  easy  for  as 
to  understand  this,  since  letter-writing  with  as  has 
nearly  ceased  to  be  a  practical  force  for  producing  gen- 
eral effects.  It  is  now,  chiefly,  an  instrument  for  the  ex- 
change of  news,  usually  of  minor  domestic  particolara, 
or  for  offering  occasional  congratulations,  expressions 
of  regard,  friendly  advices.  We  give  to  it  only  brief 
intervals  of  time,  and  even  then  are  perhaps  reluctant 
to  undertake,  glad  to  avoid  it.  That  it  should  now  affect 
public  events,  in  important  ways,  with  an  efficacious 
vigor,  would  appear  to  us  almost  preposterous.  Bat  it 
must  be  remembered  that  letter-writing  in  the  day  of 
Bernard  was  to  men  like  himself  a  serious,  important, 
and  prominent  part  of  public  activity.  It  took  the  place 
of  books  and  pamphlets.  It  took  the  place,  largely,  of 
oral  conference,  especially  among  those  who  did  not 
easily  and  frequently  meet.  It  represented,  therefore, 
with  greater  effect  than  we  without  effort  can  under- 
stand, the  mind  of  the  writer ;  and  when  letters  were 
sent,  as  his  usually  were,  by  personal  messengers,  and 
accompanied  by  unwritten  urgencies  and  instructions 
communicated  through  them,  they  filled  the  place,  some- 
times perhaps  even  more  than  filled  it,  of  the  personal 
interviews  which  could  not  be  had. 

So  it  was  that  those  frequent  and  vigorous  epistles 
which  went  from  Clairvaux  to  the  councils  and  courts  of 
Europe,  to  principal  persons  in  Church  and  State,  or  to 
those  who  were  tlirough  any  circumstances  directly  con- 
nected with  grave  affairs,  multiplied  prodigiously  the 
force  exerted  by  their  author,  and  vastly  extended  the 
range  of  his  appeals.    He  wrought  by  them  as  directly, 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIR&      628 

and  almost  as  effectively,  as  if  be  could  have  been  pres- 
ent at  once  in  twenty  places. 

Among  bis  important  public  acbievements  that  of  es- 
tablishing Innocent  Second  on  the  papal  throne  probably 
occupied  the  first  place  in  his  thought,  and  is  still  most 
conspicuous  in  the  memory  of  the  world.  Of  that,  there* 
fore,  it  is  natural  that  we  think  and  speak  first. 

After  the  death  of  Honorius  Second,  in  February  a.  d. 
1180,  two  rival  candidates  had  been  elected  to  the  pa- 
pacy by  those  of  the  cardinals  who  respectively  adhered 
to  l^e  one  or  the  other.  One  was  Gregory,  cardinal  of 
St.  Angelo,  who  took  the  title  of  Innocent  Second ;  the 
other  was  Peter  Leonis,  also  one  of  the  cardinals,  who 
took  the  title  of  Anacletus  Second.  He  was  the  grandson 
of  a  rich  Jewish  banker  at  Rome  who  had  professed 
conversion  to  Christianity  under  the  pontificate  of  Leo 
Ninth,  and  had  taken  his  name ;  whose  family  had  after- 
ward steadily  risen  in  prominence  and  influence.  The 
descendant  of  this  man,  now  designated  as  pope,  had 
studied  at  Paris,  had  been  for  a  time  a  monk  at  Glugni, 
had  been  made  a  cardinal  by  Calixtus  Second,  and  had 
been  employed  in  the  high  office  of  papal  Legate.  It  is 
probable  that  he  had  had  correspondence  with  Bernard, 
and  that  to  him  some  kind  and  respectful  letters  had 
been  addressed  which  remain  for  us  in  the  collection  of 
Bernard's  epistles.^  He  received  a  large  majority  of 
the  votes  of  the  cardinals,  thirty  or  more,  while,  accord- 
ing to  Baronius,  only  sixteen  had  cast  tlieir  votes  for 
Innocent;'  and  the  canonical  rules  for  election  had 
been  in  the  case  of  Peter  more  exactly  observed.  But 
Innocent  had  been  chosen  first,  at  a  meeting  of  his  ad- 

1  Epist.  xvii.,  zviiL,  ziz. 

*  Baronius  names  the  sizteen,  and  adds  that  three  others  at  first  opposed 
to  Iiinocent  afterward  joined  them.    (Ecd.  Annal.,  zviii.  p.  429.) 


626  BBBNABD  OF  OLAIBYAUX: 

bloody  thresholds,  desolate  streets,  mffians  in  the  sanc- 
tuaries, brigands  in  the  fields.  It  meant,  always,  arrest 
of  progress,  wasting  of  strength,  devastation  of  property, 
life  sacrificed  in  multitudes  of  homeS|  hopes  blighted 
in  thousands  of  hearts.  But  a  dispute  between  rivals 
each  asserting  for  himself  the  proper  spiritual  lord- 
ship of  Christendom  meant  even  more  than  this,  and 
unspeakably  more :  contending  abbots  in  many  monaa- 
teries,  antagonist  prelates  in  many  bishoprics ;  ordinar 
tions  stigmatized  as  schismatical  and  null;  alleged 
priestly  successions  fatally  fractured;  sacraments  de- 
nounced as  representative  of  Anti-Christ,  and  received, 
if  at  all,  with  trembling  hearts. 

It  meant  baptisms,  marriages,  absolutions,  burials,  cer- 
tain to  be  pronounced  invalid  and  accursed  by  one  side 
or  the  other.  It  meant  the  fierceness  of  hate  on  earih 
which  always  accompanies  religious  dissension,  and 
spiritual  anathemas,.from  either  party  against  the  other, 
loading  the  air  and  almost  darkening  the  sky.  One 
could  hardly  escape,  in  the  confusion  and  clash  of  anath- 
emas, being  formally  cursed  on  the  right  hand  or  the 
left ;  and  if  there  were  any  uncertainty  as  to  the  Divine 
prerogative  of  the  cursor  there  could  not  fail  to  be  dis- 
quieting fear  while  the  terrible  imprecations  were  being 
hurled  forth.^  The  very  rights  of  secular  sovereignty 
became  uncertain,  since  these  were  recognized  as  de> 
pending  at  last  on  pontifical  sanction,  and  liable  to  be 
suspended  by  pontifical  excommunication.  It  was  never 
impossible,  therefore,  it  was  hardly  unlikely,  that  in  con- 

^  In  each  a  schism  erery  one  was  in  apprehension  of  the  sentenoe  of 
•zoommnnication,  and  it  was  difficult  to  escape  it»  while  one  fulminated 
against  the  other,  fiercely  denouncing  his  opponent  and  those  who  sap- 
ported  him.  Thus  each  of  them  [the  contending  ahbots  or  hishops]  was  at 
a  loss  what  to  do,  and  there  was  nothing  left  for  him  hut  to  imprecate  tlia 
eorae  of  God  on  his  liytH.  —  Ordmcua  Filalis,  lib.  ziiL  c.  xL  (a.  ik  1130). 


21  HIS  RELATION  TO  GBNERAL  BUBOPBAN  AWFAIBB.     527 

nection  with  a  dispute  of  this  sort  contending  armies 
would  have  to  be  marshalled,  cities  to  be  beleaguered, 
fruitful  provinces  to  be  flooded  with  blood,  as  rival 
princes  represented  in  their  pretensions  the  contradictorj 
authority  of  rival  popes ;  and  the  dispute  could  only  be 
fiercer  and  more  prolonged,  because  there  was  no  supe- 
rior tribunal,  in  Church  or  State,  to  which  appeal  might 
be  taken,  while  it  would  have  appeared  simply  impious 
to  require  one  who  might  conceivably  be  Christ's  vice- 
gerent to  submit  himself  to  the  ordeal,  of  arms  or  of 
fire.  A  controversy  like  this  was  therefore  the  most 
tremendous  in  itself,  the  most  far-extending  in  its  con- 
nections, that  could  have  been  precipitated  upon  Europe. 
It  meant,  in  fact,  the  ecclesiastical  unity  which  alone 
now  held  Europe  together  disastrously  broken ;  Christen- 
dom divided  on  spiritual  lines ;  what  was  esteemed  the 
very  Kingdom  of  God  so  centrally  divided  that  it  could 
not  stand.  And  when  Innocent  appeared  in  France  to 
propound  his  claims,  the  case  was  recognized  by  Louis 
and  his  counsellors  as  one  of  the  gravest  that  could 
have  been  presented. 

The  question  was  by  no  means  easy  of  decision,  as  to 
which  of  the  asserted  popes  had  fairer  claim  to  the  al- 
legiance of  France,  or  which  was  more  likely  to  secure 
it.  There  were  arguments  enough  on  either  side,  and 
neither  was  lacking  in  resolute  advocates.  Anacletus 
had  powerful  friends  in  Paris,  as  well  as  multitudes  of 
passionate  adherents  in  the  provinces  of  the  South.  He 
had  probably  reckoned  on  the  adhesion  of  the  rich  and 
powerful  abbey  of  Clugni,  at  which  he  had  been  for- 
merly a  monk.  In  this,  however,  he  was  disappointed, 
as  Clugni  welcomed  Innocent  with  profuse  hospitality, 
sending  to  Aries,  it  is  said,  sixty  horse-loads  of  needed 
articles  for  himself  and  his  retinue,  and  conducting  him 


628  BEBNABD  OF  CUJRYATSX: 

with  reverence  to  the  abbey.^  But  though  this,  of 
course,  gave  Innocent  an  important  advantage,  it  was 
rather  a  local  than  a  general  triumph,  and  left  the  ques- 
tion still  undecided  on  which  side  the  balance  of  convic- 
tion and  feeling  throughout  the  kingdom  would  finally 
turn.  Innocent  was  personally  on  the  ground,  but  let- 
ters and  messengers  of  Anacletus  were  also  tliere, 
eulogizing  the  French  church,  alternately  entreating  and 
commanding  its  support,  and  making  it  evident  that  if 
he  were  accepted  as  pontifical  head,  no  honor  or  privi- 
lege which  he  could  confer  would  be  withheld  from  bish- 
ops or  the  king.^ 

In  this  critical  emergency  Louis  Sixth  convened  a 
national  council  at  £tampes,  at  which  all  the  principal 
bishops  and  abbots  were  assembled,  to  decide  the  ques- 
tion, so  far  as  they  were  concerned,  between  the  as- 
pirants whose  defiant  and  mutually  expulsive  claims 
threatened  the  convulsive  division  of  Christendom.  To 
this  council  Bernard,  not  yet  forty  years  of  age,  was 
specially  summoned  by  the  king  and  by  eminent  prel- 
ates, under  the  impression,  evidently,  that  his  influence 
would  be  decisive.  He  obeyed  the  summons  without 
delay,  though  with  a  clear  understanding  of  what  of 
labor  and  of  danger  it  involved,  and  a  clear  apprehen- 
sion of  the  mischiefs  which  must  follow  any  error  or 
uncertainty  in  the  decision*  But  his  timidity  had  no 
reference  to  himself,  only  to  the  interests  of  what  to 
him  was  the  Church  of  God ;  and  on  his  way  to  the  city, 
with  his  sensitive  nature  supremely  excited,  he  had  the 
vision  in  the  night  to  which  I  have  before  referred,  in 
which  there  appeared  to  him^  as  in  a  trance,  a  vast 
church  filled  with  a  congregation  harmoniously  singing 

*  Ordericns  Vital.,  lib.  xiii.  cap.  zL 

s  The  letten  an  si7en  by  BaioniiiBy  torn,  xviii  pp.  itHMtfi 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  OENEBAL  BUBOPEAN  AFFAIBS.  529 

the  praises  of  God.  He  drew  from  this  the  inspiring 
aagorj  that  a  decision  woold  be  reached  acceptable  to 
God,  for  the  harmony  of  His  Church  and  the  welfare  of 
Christendom.  In  this  serene  confidence,  and  the  cour- 
age which  was  born  of  it,  he  entered  the  council.^ 

After  fasting,  and  solemn  prayer,  the  question  which 
of  the  contesting  pontiJffs  should  be  accepted  by  the 
Church  in  France  was  submitted  by  the  king,  the  bishops, 
and  the  distinguished  persons  assembled  in  the  council, 
with  unanimous  accord,  to  the  examination  and  decision 
of  Bernard.  A  question  more  largely  or  profoundly 
affecting  the  interests  of  countries,  the  public  welfare 
of  the  Continent,  in  fact  the  development  of  Christian 
civilization,  has  never  been  submitted,  before  or  since, 
to  the  judgment  of  any  uncrowned  man.  He  accepted 
with  awe  the  tremendous  trust,  examined  with  care  the 
order  of  the  election,  the  merits  of  those  taking  part  in 
that  election,  with  the  life  and  reputation  of  him  first 
chosen ;  and  without  qualification  he  declared  Innocent 
to  be  the  true  and  lawful  pope.'    Those  who  heard  the 

*  Convocato  igittir  apnd  Stampas  concilio,  abbas  sanetiu  ClanB-YaUen* 
aiB  BemardoBy  apedaliter  ab  ipso  rege  Fianoonim  et  pnBcipnis  qoibaaqua 
pontificibiu  accenitos,  stent  postea  fatebatur,  non  mediociiter  pavidus  et 
tremebuDdDs  ad7enit,  perionlum  qaippe  et  pondns  negotii  non  ignorans. 
In  itinera  tamen  oonsolatns  est  enm  Dens,  ostendens  ei  in  yisa  noctis 
Ecdesiam  magnam  ooncorditer  in  Dei  laudibns  concineutem ;  nnde  spera- 
yit  pacem  sine  dubio  proyentnram.  —  Operu,  vol.  prim.,  Vita,  i.  lib.  iL  cap. 
1,  coL  2147. 

s  Celebrato  prins  jejnnio,  et  precibns  ad  Doom  fasis,  cnm  de  eodem 
Terbo  tiactatnri  Bex  et  episcopi  cnm  principibns  consedissent,  nnnm 
omninm  consilium  fuit,  una  sentential  nt  negotium  Dei,  Dei  Famulo  im- 
poneretur,  et  ex  ore  ejus  cansa  tota  pendeiet.  Quod  ille,  timens  licet  et 
tremens,  monitis  tamen  Tiromm  fidelinm  acquiesoens  susoepit,  et  diligen- 
ter  proeecutuB  electionis  ordinem,  electorum  merits,  vitam  et  famam  prioris 
electi,  apemit  os  sunm,  et  Spiritus  sanctus  implerit  illud.  Unns  ei^ 
omninm  ore  locutns,  susdpiendum  ab  omnibus  summum  pontificem  Inno- 
oentium  nominavit.  —  Opera,  yoL  sec,  Vita,  L  lib.  ii  cap.  1«  ooL  8147. 

84 


530  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRVAUX  : 

decision  bowed  before  it,  as  if  tbrougb  bis  lips  the  H0I7 
Ghost  had  personally  spoken.  With  universal  acclama- 
tion, and  with  praises  to  God  for  His  illuminating  guid- 
ance, the  honors  of  the  pontificate  were  awarded  to 
Innocent  by  the  council,  and  so  far  as  the  kingdom  of 
France  was  concerned  the  question  was  settled,  though 
in  the  Southern  provinces  the  party  of  Anacletus  for  a 
time  retained  its  power.  Surely  no  higher  testimony 
could  have  been  given  to  the  influence  and  the  prestige 
which  had  come  to  belong  to  this  unobtrusive  individual 
abbot,  thirty-nine  years  of  age,  and  wearing  none  of  the 
dazzling  titles  in  Church  or  State !  One  delicate  hand 
had  turned  the  currents  of  ecclesiastical  empire  through- 
out a  powerful  kingdom  into  the  channels  which  it  had 
traced.  The  monk  of  Clairvaux,  not  the  cardinals,  had 
appointed  the  pope. 

How  far  Bernard  may  have  been  moved  to  his  decision 
by  his  confidence  in  Haimeric,  of  a  noble  Burgundian 
family,  who  had  been  for  some  time  Cardinal  Chan- 
cellor, to  whom  the  abbot  had  addressed  affectionate 
letters,  and  to  whom  he  dedicated  his  treatise  ^'De 
Diligendo  Deo,"  cannot  now  be  said;^  but  his  ulti- 

^  The  adherents  of  Anacletus  wrote  thus  of  Haimeric,  their  rags  being 
perhaps  his  commendation :  — 

' '  Haimericns  quondam  Cancellarins,  qui  Romanam  Ecclesiam  quasi  Tile 
scortum  pro  laznriis,  et  avaritia  soa,  longo  jam  tempore  haboit  prostitotana 
qui  simoniis,  dent  voe  ipsi  (at  credimns)  aliqnando  ftiistis  ezperti,  exao- 
tionibusqne  yariis  Dei  Ecclesiam,  et  Dei  servos  dintins  tnicidavit,"  etc.  — 
EpisL  ad  Lotharium,  Banmius  EccL  Annal.,  xviii.  p.  436. 

Anacletos  himself  wrote  of  the  whole  party  of  his  opponents^  and  of 
Haimeric  in  particular :  — 

"  Filii  Belial,  filii  pestilentin,  inebriati  calice  ins  Dei  omnipotentia. 
Qaomm  caput  est  Haimericus,  quondam  CanceUarius^  avaritia 
bistrionum,  et  scurrarum  delirus  incentor,  Eoclesiamm  expoliator, 
Torum  Dei  improbus  exactor/'  etc— /Kci.,  xviii.  p.  444. 

The  pontifical  privilege  of  enrsing  in  Latin  is  by  no  means  a  modMs 
ona. 


IN  HIB  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIR&  581 

mate  judgment  appears  to  have  been  based,  largely  if 
not  principally,  on  his  justified  preference  for  the  char- 
acter of  Innocent  as  compared  with  that  of  his  rich, 
ambitious,  and  unscrupulous  rival.  He  admitted,  as  I 
have  said,  a  certain  want  of  the  proper  formalities  in 
the  election  of  Innocent,  but  he  insisted,  with  utter 
assurance,  that  he  was  a  man  whose  uprightness  of  life, 
his  integrity  of  purpose,  and  his  just  reputation  made 
him  worthy  of  an  office  so  august ;  while  his  comments 
on  the  spirit  and  action  of  Anacletus  are  scornfully 
severe,  —  are  in  fact  so  severe  as  to  involve  a  practical 
condemnation  of  the  pontiffs  who  had  previously  ad- 
vanced  him  to  his  high  though  subordinate  clerical 
offices.^  The  man  whose  character,  more  than  his  learn- 
ing, more  than  even  acuteness,  variety,  or  splendor  of 
genius,  without  any  accessories  of  distinguished  rank, 
had  given' him  his  singular  supremacy  in  Europe,  thus 
put  the  man  whose  character  he  esteemed  on  the  ponti- 
fical throne  of  Christendom.  Certainly,  here  was  shown 
a  vast  progress  from  the  foul  chaos  in  Church  affairs  of 
two  centuries  before.  Certainly  the  age  did  not  wholly 
deserve  the  name  of  *^dark''  in  which  such  a  decision, 
from  such  a  source,  and  based  on  such  grounds,  could 
determine  a  question  so  vast  in  its  reach,  so  exciting  to 
the  passions,  on  which  men  might,  as  it  seems  to  us, 

1  His  tettimony  on  these  points  is  nniformly  the  same  with  that  given 
by  him  to  William  of  Aqnitaine,  though  in  this  he  emplojrs  the  mUdeet 
teims  (concerning  Anadetas) :  — 

Si  Tera  sunt  qua  nbiqae  divulgat  opinio,  neo  nnius  dignns  est  yicnU 
potestate ;  si  vera  non  sunt,  decet  nihilominns  caput  Ecelesift,  non  solum 
Tit«  habere  sahitatem,  sed  et  fanus  decorem.  .  .  .  Domini  pape  Inno- 
•entii  et  innocens  vita,  et  integra  fama,  et  electio  canoniea  preedicatur. 
Priora  duo  nee  hoetee  diffitentur ;  tertium  caluroniam  habuit,  sed  nuper 
frim  calumniatores  in  suo  sunt  mendado  deprehensL  —  Opera,  vol.  priiu. 
epist.  czxrii.  col.  886. 


582  BEBNABD  OF  GLAXBYAUZ  : 

reasonably  differ,  and  the  settlement  of  which  most 
carry  with  it,  in  either  direction,  such  immense  and 
permanent  effects.    The  spirit  of  Bernard  must  have 
rested  securely  in  Grod  when  it  could  sustain  an  office 
like  this  without  feeling  the  stir  of  ambition  or  of  pride. 
Much  had  thus  been  accomplished,  but  much  more 
remained  to  be  done.    Louis  Sixth  at  once  sent  his  minis- 
ter, Suger,  with  many  bishops,  to  Clugni,  to  greet  In- 
nocent in  his  name,  and  escort  him  to  the  little  town  of 
Saint-Benott  on  the  Loire,  where  the  Boyal  Family  im- 
mediately met  him,  offering  their  homage,  receinng  his 
blessing,  and  promising  affectionate  and  reverent  service. 
The  decision  of  Henry,  the  king  of  England,  and  that  of 
Lothaire,  the  emperor  of  Germany,  were  however  still  in 
suspense.    How  Bernard  overcame  the  hesitation  of  the 
great  English  king,  I  have  said  already.    The  English 
bishops  were  many  of  them  opposed  to  Innocent,  and 
vehemently  in  favor  of  Anacletus.    Henry  pleaded  his 
conscientious  doubt  as  to  which  he  should  accept ;  and 
Bernard  went  at  him  like  a  knight  in  the  tournament, 
with  his  lance  aimed  full  at  the  breast  of  his  opponent. 
"  Answer  to  God  yourself,"  he  said,  **  for  your  other 
sins ;  leave  this  one  to  me ;  let  it  rest  wholly  on  my- 
self." ^   The  soldier-king  yielded  to  the  impetuous  onset, 
and  with  his  vast  retinue  assembled  at  Ghartres  offered 
his  homage  to  the  man  whom  Bernard  declared  the  true 
vicegerent  of  the   Lord  on  earth.    It  was   again  the 
Damascus  blade  against  the  heavy  Norman  battle-axe ; 
or  rather,  it  was  like  the  modern  rifle-shot  against  the 
casque  which  it  smites  and   pierces.    The   king   was 
strong,  and  could  be  stubborn ;  but  the  intense  temper 
of  the  abbot,  when  fully  aroused,  was  too  muoh  for 
mail  to  stand  against. 

^  Opera,  vol.  aec.,  Vita,  l  lib.  u.  col.  214S. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  OENEBiX.  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.  683 

Lothaire,  however,  was  not  yet  subdued,  and  there  was 
doubt  as  to  his  decision.  Anacletus  and  his  friends  had 
written  to  him  largely,  insisting  on  the  irregular,  in- 
valid, and  void  character  of  the  so-called  election  of  In- 
nocent,^ and  suggesting  vague  promises  of  large  benefit 
to  the  empire  from  the  recognition  of  Anacletus.  Lo- 
thaire, hovirever,  was  evidently  inclined  to  follow  in  the 
steps  of  the  two  powerful  neighboring  monarchs  in  the 
acceptance  of  Innocent,  and  he  in  October  received 
the  latter  with  honor  at  Lidge,  holding  the  bridle  of  his 
horse  as  he  led  him  through  the  city.  But  immediately, 
on  being  appealed  to  by  the  pope  to  conduct  him  with  an 
army  into  Italy  and  to  Rome,  the  emperor  revived  the 
question  of  investitures,  on  which  so  fierce  a  contest  had 
been  waged  between  preceding  emperors  and  pontiffs. 
It  was  to  the  utter  dismay  of  Innocent,  and  of  all  the 
Italian  ecclesiastics  in  his  train,  that  this  grave  question 
was  thus  reopened.  Obviously,  if  Lothaire  were  stub- 
bornly to  insist  on  hard  conditions,  and  to  make  the  ac* 
ceptance  of  them  a  prerequisite  to  his  acceptance  of  the 
pope,  Innocent  must  be  humiliated,  the  power  of  the 
pontificate  must  be  reduced,  or  he  must  fail  to  obtain  rec- 
ognition in  the  vast  domains  of  Central  Europe.  No 
wonder  that  his  companions  turned  pale,  and  wished  al- 
most that  they  had  not  left  Rome  to  encounfier  this 
greater  peril  in  the  North.  They  could  by  themselves 
have  done  nothing  with  the  emperor,  to  move  him  from 
the  purpose  which  had  now  become  an  inheritance  of  his 
house,  and  for  which  the  time  appeared  especially  op- 

^  Their  fepnsentation  of  the  first  hasty  election  was  this:  — 
Qnia  igitor  neglecto  ordine,  contempto  canone,  spreto  etiam  ipso  a 
ToeiB  condito  anathemate,  me  inoonsulto  Priore  yestro,  inconsultis  etiam 
fratribas  majoriboa,  et  prioribns*  nee  etiam  TocatiB  aut  ezpectatis,  .  .  . 
pro  infecto  habendum  esae^  et  nihil  omnino  exiatere,  ex  ipsa  yestra  »Bti- 
matione  potertis  adyertere.  —  "BjLBontua :  SeeUi,  AninaLf  xyiii.  438» 


534  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBVAUZ  : 

portune.  But  again  Bernard  came  to  the  front,  and  the 
same  impetuous  energy  of  speech,  pushed  on  by  the  same 
swift  energy  of  feeling,  which  had  conquered  Henrj, 
conquered  Lothaire.  With  wonderful  liberty  of  utter- 
ance, and  a  wonderful  authority,  as  his  biographer  says,^ 
he  soon  brought  the  emperor  to  accept  without  conditions 
the  claim  of  Innocent,  and  to  show  his  submission  to 
him  as  pontiff  with  significant  public  ceremonial.  He 
promised,  further,  to  march  with  an  army  into  Italy  in 
the  following  year,  to  establish  the  pontiff  in  St. 
Peter's. 

After  this  conference  vrith  the  emperor,  and  probably 
before  a  magnificent  celebration  of  Easter  at  St.  Denis, 
the  pope  with  his  retinue  visited  Glairvaux,  the  home  of 
the  man  who  had  really  placed  him  on  the  throne  of 
Christendom ;  and  there  is  something  wonderfully  touch- 
ing, to  the  thoughtful  reader  even  sublime,  in  the  de- 
scription by  one  of  the  monks  of  his  affectionate  welcome 
to  that  abbey,  after  the  princely,  episcopal,  and  imperial 
pageantries  which  elsewhere  had  attended  him;  after 
even  the  first  opulent  reception  which  had  gladdened 
him  at  Clugni.  At  Glairvaux  he  was  greeted,  as  Ernald 
says,  ^^  by  the  poor  of  Christ,  not  adorned  with  purple 
and  silk,  not  meeting  him  with  gilded  copies  of  the  gos- 
pels, but  in  tattered  bands  bearing  a  cross  of  stone ;  not 
with  the  thunderous  blast  of  noisy  trumpets,  or  with 
clamorous  jubilation,  but  with  the  restrained  modulation 
of  chants.  Bishops  wept,  the  pope  himself  was  moved 
to  tears ;  and  all  marvelled  at  the  grave  aspect  of  the 

1  Ad  qaod  yerbum  [epiBcoporom  sibi  reatitai  inTestitarts]  expaTira  •! 
ezpdlaere  Romani,  grayins  sese  apnd  Leodiam  arbitnti  periculom  oiS»« 
diBse,  qnam  decUnarerint  Romse.  Nee  consilium  floppetebat,  donee  mnmm 
M  oppoenit  Abbas  sanctua.  Andacter  enim  reeittens  Regi,  Terbom  malig- 
nnm  mint  libertate  redarguit,  mira  anctoritate  compeacnit.  —  Ofou,  toI 
prim.,  Vita,  I  lib.  ii.  cap.  1,  col.  2149. 


m  HIS  BELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.     685 

congregation,  as  with  solemn  J07,  all  their  eyes  fixed  on 
the  ground  with  no  wandering  curiosity,  they  surrounded 
him,  seeing  no  one  through  their  closed  eye-lids,  while 
themselves  seen  of  alL  Nothing  in  their  church  did 
any  Roman  behold  which  he  coveted  ;  no  splendid 
equipment  solicited  his  attention.  There  was  nothing 
in  the  oratory  except  plain  walls.  The  celebration  was 
accomplished,"  the  chronicler  adds,  ^^  not  by  banquets, 
but  by  virtues.  Plain  bread  of  unbolted  flour  took  the 
place  of  wheat  loaves,  the  juice  of  herbs  was  offered  for 
sweet  wine,  vegetables  in  place  of  rare  fish,  beans  and 
pease  instead  of  delicate  viands.  If,  by  chance,  a  fish 
was  found  it  was  placed  before  the  pope,  and  so  far  as 
others  were  concerned  it  was  to  be  looked  at  but  not 
used."  1 

It  is  quite  easy  to  understand  that  however  the  pope 
and  the  cardinals  might  admire  Bernard,  and  feel  their 
dependence  upon  his  aid,  they  would  not  care  long  to 
share  his  hospitality,  but  gladly  departed  for  the  festiv- 
ities and  the  splendors  of  Paris.  The  abbot  himself, 
meantime,  had  been  commissioned  to  go  into  Aquitaine, 
and  try  to  establish  there  the  authority  of  the  pontiff 
whom  he  had  named. 

He  returned,  however,  in  time  to  be  present  at  an  im- 
portant council  at  Rheims  in  October  a.  d.  1181,  where 
the  king  and  queen  were  in  attendance,  with  many  prel- 
ates of  England  and  Germany  as  well  as  France,  and 
where  the  young  son  of  Louis  was  crowned  by  the  pope. 
Thirteen  archbishops,  and  two  hundred  and  sixty-three 
bishops,  with  many  abbots  and  monks,  are  said  by 
Orderic  to  have  been  in  attendance ;  ^  but  Bernard  was 
here  as  elsewhere  the  animating  and  guiding  spirit  of 

1  Opera,  toL  sec,  Vita,  i.  lib.  iL  oap.  1  (Sraald's),  coL  2149. 
<  Order.  Vital.,  ziii.  12. 


536  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUX  : 

the  assembly,  with  whom  the  pope  took  continual  pri- 
vate counsel,  and  whose  judgment  of  what  was  needed  bj 
the  Church  was  fully  expressed  in  the  fornuil  acts  and 
declarations.^  Since  the  council  at  Etampes  in  the 
previous  year,  immense  progress  had  been  made  by  the 
party  of  Innocent;  and  when  this  council  at  Bheims 
was  dissolved,  which  had  been  sitting  under  his  presi- 
dency, it  might  well  have  seemed  to  those  not  regarding 
things  in  their  wider  relations  that  the  end  was  secured, 
and  that  his  place  in  the  papacy  had  been  practically 
established. 

In  Italy,  however,  was  still  a  wide  and  fierce  resist- 
ance, which  it  was  well  nigh  impossible  for  man  to  over- 
come. Anacletusand  his  partisans  possessed  the  city 
of  Rome ;  Roger  of  Sicily,  the  bold  and  haughty  Norman 
soldier  who  exercised  royal  dominion  in  the  South,  was 
his  imflinching  supporter.  Conrad,  who  three  years 
before  had  been  crowned  king  of  Italy,  led  a  powerful 
party  opposed  to  any  intervention  by  the  German  em- 
peror in  the  matter  of  the  papacy,  and,  through  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Hohenstauffen  family  which  he  represented, 
was  able  to  embarrass  the  emperor  at  home.  Anselm, 
the  ambitious  archbishop  of  Milan,  who  had  crowned 
Conrad,  was  a  sworn  adherent  of  Anacletus,  and  his  vast 
official  influence  was  exerted  to  the  utmost  against  Hie 

^  In  omnibos  his  dominiu  Papa  Abbatem  a  ae  aeparari  non  patiebatm; 
ted  CDm  Cardinalibas  rebaa  pnbUcis  asridebat.  Sed  et  priTatiln  qaotqnot 
babebant  negotia,  Yirum  Dei  secretiaa  oonanlebant.  —  Opera,  toL  sec. 
Vita,  i.  lib.  ii.  cap.  1,  col.  2148. 

Aa  to  the  sequence  of  the  eyents  above  mentioned,  —  the  meeting  with 
Lothaire,  the  visit  to  Clairvanx,  the  council  at  Rheima,  — what  seems  the 
moTp  probable  order  has  been  followed.  Kabillon  places  the  papal  visit 
to  Clairvanz  after  the  council  (Opera,  S.  Bern.,  vol.  prim.  col.  86),  but  in 
regard  to  that,  and  the  first  mission  to  Aquitaine,  the  lecture  accepts  tha 
Older  indicated  by  Batisbonne  (Hist.  de.  S.  B.,  tom.  L  pp.  274-277). 


IN  HIS  BELATION  TO  QBNEBAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIB8.    687 

pope  of  Bernard's  choice.  Genoa  and  Pisa,  both  power* 
ful  on  the  sea,  and  both  inclined  to  accept  Innocent, 
were  divided  from  each  other  by  rivalries  and  antipa- 
thies, which  seemed  incapable  of  being  reduced.  Even 
the  great  abbey  of  Monte  Gassino,  head  of  all  others,  at 
last  declared  for  Anacletus;  and  to  bring  the  severed 
Italian  States  with  the  quarrelling  monasteries  into  unity, 
under  the  pontiff  whom  France  had  preferred,  seemed  as 
impossible  as  to  level  the  Apennines  by  an  argument,  or 
to  empty  the  Tiber  into  a  chalice.  But  the  conquering 
energy  of  Bernard  succeeded  at  last  even  in  this. 

The  little  army  which  Lothaire  led  into  Italy,  in  the 
spring  of  a.  d.  1183,  consisting  of  not  more  than  two  thon- 
sand  cavalry,  was  able  to  conduct  Innocent  to  Borne,  and 
to  install  him  for  a  time  in  the  Lateran,  but  it  could  not 
open  St.  Peter's  to  him,  or  permanently  occupy  any  part 
of  the  city.  The  summer  heats  soon  pushed  the  small 
army  back  to  the  Alps,  and  Innocent  himself  withdrew  to 
Pisa.  A  wholly  different  force  was  needed,  different  from 
armies,  different  from  diplomacies,  utterly  different  from 
the  noisy  clang  of  battling  anathemas,  to  tranquillize  and 
unite  the  distracted  Italian  church ;  and  that  force  was 
supplied  by  the  presence,  the  eloquence,  and  the  irre- 
sistible spirit  of  the  now  famous  monk.  I  cannot  here 
set  forth  his  efforts  in  particulars.  It  is  suflScient  to  say 
that  he  made  three  journeys  to  Italy,  on  what  was  to 
him  this  momentous  errand,  and  that  in  the  end  he  was 
wholly  successful.  He  secured  the  cordial  reconciliation 
of  Genoa  and  Pisa ;  the  more  difficult  reconciliation  of 
the  Hohenstauffen  princes  with  the  emperor  Lothaire. 
At  a  great  council  held  at  Pisa,  at  which  Anacletus  was 
excommunicated,  and  all  his  adherents  were  deprived  of 
the  offices  conferred  by  him,  without  hope  of  restoration, 
Bernard  was  the  animating  soul  of  the  assembly,  assist- 


538  BERNARD  OF  CX.AIRVAUZ  : 

ing  all  by  his  counsels,  regarded  with  utmost  reverence 
by  all,  with  bishops  waiting  before  his  doors  on  account 
of  the  crowds  flocking  to  consult  him.  He  seemed  in- 
deed,  as  his  biographer  says,  not  to  be  on  the  side  which 
had  anxieties,  but  on  that  which  already  possessed  ful- 
ness of  power.^  From  Pisa,  at  the  close  of  the  council, 
he  went  to  Milan,  and  the  excitement  in  that  heretofore 
rebellious  city  I  have  already  noticed.  It  was  almost  as 
if  an  angel  of  Ood,  with  radiant  plumes  and  in  the  shin- 
ing celestial  raiment,  had  descended  upon  the  place. 
They  who  had  thronged  from  the  city  to  meet  him  kissed 
his  feet,  and  in  spite  of  his  reluctance  and  animated  re- 
monstrance threw  themselves  prone  on  the  ground  before 
him.  Miracles  without  number  were  attributed  to  him. 
It  was  believed  that  whatever  he  asked  of  Ood  would  be 
given.  The  whole  business  of  the  city  was  suspended, 
that  men  might  see  him,  hear  him,  and  if  so  fortunate 
might  feel  his  touch.'  It  was  a  fine  frenzy  of  reverence, 
a  tumultuous  passion  of  admiration  and  honor ;  and  it 

^  Adfait  per  omnU  et  oonsiliu,  et  jadiciif»  et  definitbnibas  omnibiu 
sanctas  Abbas,  impendebatarqae  ei  reyeraiitia  tb  omnibos,  et  exenbabuit 
ante  ejas  limina  aaoerdotes ;  ndn  qaod  fastus,  led  multitado  commimem 
pioliiberet  accaesoxn ;  et  aliis  egredientibos,  alii  intioibant,  ita  nt  Tideietiir 
Yir  hnmiliB,  et  nihil  sibi  de  his  honoribna  axrogaDi,  non  esM  in  parte 
soUidtadiniB,  sed  in  plenitudine  potestatis.  —  Qpero,  toL  aec,  Yit^  L  lib. 
iL  cap.  2,  col.  2151. 

*  nU  aadieront  Mediolanenses  Abbatem  dedderatam  miis  finibns  pr»- 
pinqnaie,  longe  a  civitate  milliaribas  aeptem  omnii  ei  popnlns  obviat; 
nobiles,  ignobilee,  equites,  pedites,  mediocres,  panperes,  qaari  de  eiyit^te 
migraient,  proprios  lares  deseront,  et  distinctis  agminibos  inerediMli 
reverentia  Yirum  Dei  suscipinnt  Omnes  pariter  deleetantar  aspecta,  felioes 
se  jadicant  qui  possant  frai  audita.  .  .  .  Yellieabant  etiam  pHos  qooa 
poterant  de  indnmentis  fjns,  et  ad  morbonim  retnedia  de  pannomm  Udniia 
aliqnld  detrahebant,  omnia  sancta,  qu»  ille  tetigisset,  jndicantes.  .  .  • 
Cesaatnm  est  ab  offidii  et  artibns,  tota  dvitaa  in  hoc  spectacalnm  saapeu» 
manet ;  oonourrant,  postulant  benedid;  et  tetigisse  enm  mngalis  salntaiv 
Tidetnr.  —  Opera,  roL  sac.,  Yita,  L  lib.  ii.  cap.  %  coll.  3161-5S. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  OENERAL  EUROPEAN   AFFAIRS.     539 

culmiuated  when  the  entire  people,  led  by  the  magis- 
trates  and  the  clergy,  insisted  on  his  remaining  with 
them,  and  becoming  their  archbishop.  There  seems 
something  of  ironical  shrewdness  in  his  reply,  but  per- 
haps no  other  way  of  escape  was  open  to  him.  ^'  To- 
morrow/* said  he,  ^^  I  will  mount  my  horse,  and  leave  it 
to  Providence  to  direct  him.  If  he  shall  bear  me  beyond 
the  walls  1  shall  hold  myself  free  from  all  engagement 
But  if  he  remains  within  the  gates,  I  will  accept  the 
charge  and  be  your  pastor/'  So,  on  the  morrow,  he 
mounted  his  horse,  and  proceeding  at  a  gallop  left  in  all 
haste  the  walls  of  Milan.^ 

His  return  to  Glairvaux  was  everywhere  like  a  tri- 
umphal march,  and  the  reception  which  he  there  met 
was  such  as  satisfied  even  his  ardent  heart.  He  might 
then  reasonably  look  forward  to  following  years  of  quiet- 
ness and  rest,  interrupted  only  by  the  rebuilding  of  the 
monastery,  to  which  he  had  given  a  tardy  consent.  But 
in  the  subsequent  year,  again  at  the  personal  urgency  of 
Innocent,  he  went  once  more,  for  the  third  time,  into 
Italy,  to  win  the  allegiance,  if  that  were  possible,  of 
Roger  of  Sicily,  the  most  determined  of  all  the  partisans 
who  adhered  to  Anacletus,  the  most  powerful  in  arms 
as  well  as  in  spirit,  and  without  whose  consent  the 
enthronement  of  Innocent  at  St.  Peter's  was  not  possi- 
ble. Roger  was  not  willing  to  meet  Bernard  alone,  but 
opposed  to  him  Peter  of  Pisa,  reputed  one  of  the  most 
learned  and  eloquent  men  in  Europe,  skilled  in  argu- 
ment, and  devoted  to  Anacletus.  Him  Bernard  almost 
instantly  silenced,  by  argument  deftly  blended  with  per- 
suasion. But  he  had  not  secured  the  submission  of  the 
king.  It  is  not  at  all  certain  that  his  further  effort  in 
this  direction  would  have  been  successful ;  for  the  inter- 

*  Sm  Ratisboone,  Hint,  de  St.  Bernard,  torn.  L  p.  81 S. 


640  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIRTAUX: 

ests  of  ihe  bold  and  aspiring  Norman  were  intimatelj 
associated  with  the  canse  of  Anacletos,  and  he  seems  to 
have  been  about  as  insensible  to  spiritual  appeal  as  was 
the  staff  of  his  lance.  But  at  just  this  juncture  Anade- 
tus  died ;  and  the  pontiff  elected  by  those  who  had  ad- 
hered to  him,  as  his  successor,  called  "  Victor  Fourth," 
a  far  less  tough  and  stubborn  antagonist  than  Roger  of 
Sicily,  yielded  almost  at  once  to  the  energy  of  Bernard. 
He  came  to  the  abbot  by  night,  surrendered  to  him  the 
papal  insignia,  and  was  by  him  conducted  to  Innocent 
to  make  before  him  his  final  submission. 

The  long  and  fierce  schism,  of  more  than  seven  years, 
was  thus  determined ;  and  he  whom  Bernard  had  de- 
clared the  true  pontiff  was  recognized  as  such,  by  the 
Ohristian  world,  —  by  the  East,  indeed,  as  well  as  the 
West.  Only  five  days  after,  while  Rome  was  still  tumul- 
tuous with  joy,  echoing  and  brilliant  with  triumphal 
processions,  the  intrepid  and  indefatigable  abbot,  who 
had  wrought  with  such  labors  to  such  a  success,  was  on 
his  way  back  to  look  after  his  farms,  to  converse  with 
his  monks,  to  attend  to  the  wants  of  the  poor  and  the 
sick,  to  oil  his  own  shoes,  sit  under  his  arbor,  and  pursue 
his  meditative  sermons  on  the  Canticles,  in  his  beloved 
Clairvauz.^  His  sustained  humility  in  the  entire  pro- 
longed and  passionate  struggle  is  to  one  reading  the 
story  the  most  remiarkable  of  his  achievements. 

1  Nam  et  ipse  ridicnlns  pontifez,  Petri  Leonia  haeiw,  ad  enindeiii 

Tiram  Dei  nocte  ae  contulit;  et  ille  quidem  nndatom  earn  oaarpatia 

insignibiis  ad  domini  Innocentii  pedea  addnxit.     Quo  facto  dvitaa  grata- 

;  labunda  letatar,  Innocentio  ecclesia  redditor,  Sofnumna  populoa  nt  paa- 

I  torem  et  dominum  Innocentinm  Teneratnr.   .  .  .  fiedatia  omnibna  at 

compoaitis,  viz  qninqae  diea  teneri  potait,  qui  aeptem  annia  et  ultra  pro 

resarcienda  eadem  aciaaione  audavit.    Eieantem  Roma  proaequitar,  dedu- 

I  dt  clema,  oonenrrit  popalua,  tinivena  nobOitaa  oomitator.  —  Qptru^  voL 

aee.,  Yita,  I  lib.  ii  cap.  7»  ooll.  2179-80. 


VX   HIS  BSLATION  TO  QENESAL  EUBOPBAN  AFFAISS*  641 

A  contrast  is  sometimes  as  helpful  to  the  mind  as  it  is 
to  the  eye  in  setting  a  matter  yividly  before  as ;  as  the 
shining  figure  stands  out  most  distinctly  from  a  dark 
background^  as  the  rainbow  exhibits  the  loveliness  of  its 
arch  against  the  frowning  gloom  of  the  storm.  And 
such  a  contrast  to  this  extraordinary  work  of  Bernard  is 
presented,  as  you  know,  in  the  history  of  the  Western 
Church  at  a  time  not  long  subsequent  to  his.  The  story 
is  familiar  in  its  principal  particulars,  and  need  not  be 
repeated  in  detail.  It  will  suffice  to  remind  you  that 
upon  the  death  of  Gregory  Eleventh,  in  a.  d.  1378,  two 
popes  were  again  elected,  elected  indeed  by  the  same 
cardinals,  after  an  interval  of  some  weeks  :  Urban 
Sixth,  who  reigned  at  Rome,  and  Clement  Seventh,  who 
exercised  pontifical  authority  from  Avignon.  Thus  be- 
gan another  schism,  apparently  not  more  threatening  at 
the  outset  than  had  been  that  which  Bernard  had  closed, 
but  which  continued  for  forty  years,  and  out  of  which 
emerged  immense  consequences,  —  some  of  them,  doubt- 
less, to  the  Protestant  view,  not  wholly  evil,  but  most 
of  them  then  and  permanently  disastrous.  When  the 
rival  pontiffs  first  elected  had  passed  away  by  death, 
each  party  chose  a  successor  for  itself.  A  French  assem- 
bly at  Yincennes,  with  the  king  at  its  head,  had  declared 
for  Clement ;  but  it  was  impossible  to  bring  other  States, 
with  general  accord,  to  accept  his  rule.  Spain,  Scot- 
land, and  Sicily,  stood  with  France.  On  the  side  of 
Urban  were  ranged  Italy,  Germany,  England,  Portugal, 
Hungary,  and  the  smaller  states  around  the  North  Sea. 
Enormous  extortions  were  practised  on  either  side,  to 
get  money  for  the  contest.  Simony  became  the  common 
rule,  and  spiritual  offices  were  matters  of  general  un- 
disguised traffic.  The  most  ignorant  and  worthless,  if 
rich  or  influential,  were  put  without  scruple  into  high 


542  BERNARD  OP  GLAIRYIUX  : 

ecclesiastical  trusts ;  while  each  pope  anathematized  the 
other,  as  an  accursed  usurper,  full  of  all  iniquity,  the 
veritable  Anti-Christ.  The  sale  of  indulgences  —  as 
the  people  understood  it,  giving  priestly  permission  to 
any  pleasurable  sin  —  was  wide  and  unblushing,  and 
of  course  in  its  effect  on  public  morals  was  immeas- 
urably disastrous.  It  was  a  time  of  almost  as  utter  con- 
fusion in  the  religious  development  of  Christendom  as 
the  darkest  preceding  centuries  had  seen.  Cardinals 
were  tortm'ed,  capitals  were  convulsed,  provinces  were 
swept  into  most  savage  war.  France  became  so  dis- 
gusted with  both  popes,  her  own  as  well  as  the  other, 
that  for  years,  moved  by  the  University  of  Paris,  she 
practically  recognized  neither  pontiff,  and  had  no  earthly 
head  of  the  Church. 

The  most  eminent  men  in  the  different  kingdoms 
strove,  as  for  their  life,  to  put  au  end  to  this  intolerable 
schism ;  among  them  royal  dukes,  great  prelates,  men 
like  Peter  d'Ailly,  Leonardo  Aretino,  Robert  Hallam, 
Nicholas  di  Clemangis,  the  great  Chancellor  Gerson. 
The  French  University  bent  all  its  energies  to  this  end. 
It  seemed  entirely  impossible  to  reach  it ;  and  as  years 
went  on  the  hearts  of  the  faithful  were  more  and  more 
charged  with  gloom  and  fear.  At  the  Council  of  Pisa,  a.  d. 
1409,  as  a  desperate  resort,  both  the  popes  were  declared 
deposed,  and  another  was  elected,  Alexander  Fiftii. 
After  his  death,  which  was  not  long  deferred,  John 
Twenty-third,  suspected  of  having  poisoned  the  late 
pope,  was  appointed  to  succeed  him,  and  his  whole  life 
frightfully  illustrates  the  corruption  of  the  times ;  de- 
clared to  have  been  a  pirate  in  his  youth,  certainly  after- 
ward of  most  profligate  manners,  equalling,  if  not  sur- 
passing the  unspeakable  vileness  of  John  Twelfth  in 
the  tenth  century,  and  charged  at  the  Council  of  Con- 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.    548 

stance  with  being  infidel  to  the  faith,  not  even  believing 
in  man's  immortality.  The  only  result  of  the  Council  of 
Pisa  was  therefore  to  make  three  popes,  instead  of  two, 
ruling  simultaneously,  the  last  one  only  differenced  from 
the  others  by  his  pre-eminent  shamefulness  of  wicked- 
ness.  Fortunately,  one  may  almost  say,  for  the  Church 
and  the  world,  the  character  of  this  pontiff  was  so  utterly 
imendurable  that  his  own  partisans  could  not  support 
him,  and  a  revolutionary  crisis  had  to  come.^  There- 
fore at  last,  at  the  Council  of  Constance,  a.  d.  1417,  — 
where  not  only  cardinals  were  present,  with  archbishops, 
bishops,  and  heads  of  monasteries,  but  also  deputies  of 
universities,  theological  teachers,  Doctoi*s  of  the  law,  the 
emperor  himself,  and  lay  representatives  of  great  secular 
powers  —  all  three  popes  were  again  deposed,  and  Mar- 
tin Fifth  was  elected  in  place  of  them.  Even  with  that 
the  schism  did  not  wholly  terminate,  as  Benedict  in 
Spain  still  claimed  pontifical  prerogative  till  his  death 
occurred,  seven  years  after,  and  he  was  followed  by  a 
shadowy  successor  till  a.  d.  1429. 

For  forty  ySars,  as  I  have  said,  this  terrible  stru^le 
shadowed  and  convulsed  the  powerless  Christendom. 
It  fevered  all  minds,  fretted  into  constant  excitement 

^  Against  the  darker  charges  no  one  spoke  a  word.  Before  the  final 
decree,  sixteen  of  those  of  the  mofit  indescribable  depravity  were  dropped, 
oat  of  respect  not  to  the  Pope,  but  to  pnblic  decency  and  the  dignity  of 
the  office.  On  the  remaining  undefended  fifty-fonr  the  Council  gravely, 
deliberately,  pronounced  the  sentence  of  deposition  against  the  Pope.  — 
MiLMAN  :  Hist  of  Latin  Christ.,  vol.  vii.  p.  479.     New  York  ed.  1864. 

Each  pontiff  applied  the  epithet  ''diabolical  '*  to  his  rivals  with  con- 
stant and  impartial  vigor.  But  it  seems  to  have  fitted  John  as  accurately 
as  if  made  expressly  for  him.  In  a  note  Milman  adds :  '*  I  give  one  class 
of  the  charges  in  the  words  of  Gobelinus  :  Item  ipse  graviter  fiiit  infama- 
tns,  quod  com  uxors  fratris  sui  concubuerit ;  cum  sanctimoniaiibus  inces- 
torn,  cum  virginibns  stuprum,  et  cum  coi^ugatis  adulterium  perpetraverit, 
nee  non  alia  flagitia,  propter  qualia  ira  Dei  desoendit  in  filiot  diffidentis." 


544  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUZ  : 

erery  malicious  and  greedy  pasBion,  made  the  Gospel 
itself  a  rallying  standard  for  the  worst  craft,  ambition, 
and  treachery  of  men,  and  it  appears  evident  that  it 
largely  obstructed,  instead  of  assisting,  the  normal  de- 
velopment of  Protestantism  itself.  It  chilled  the  moral 
life  of  Christendom ;  and  the  strong  tendencies  to  a  free 
and  just  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures  which  already 
were  appearing  had  to  struggle  for  existence  in  that 
plague-smitten,  tempestuous  air.  Yet  to  close  the  schism 
seemed  as  impossible  as  to  pull  mountains  together  with 
hooks  and  chains  when  an  earthquake-force  has  rent 
them  apart.  Humanly  speaking,  only  the  incomparable 
viciousness  of  John  gave  a  chance  of  success.  And  no 
small  part  of  the  explanation  is,  that  while  there  were 
kings,  councils,  and  an  emperor,  while  there  were 
learned  and  earnest  men  in  high  place  and  with  large 
power,  there  was  no  one  man  in  whom  character,  genius, 
and  a  commanding  personal  energy  were  so  exqui- 
sitely blended  that  Christendom  revered  him,  that  no 
opposition  could  stand  against  him,  that  nations  bowed, 
and  were  glad  to  bow,  to  his  dominating  word.  There 
were  multitudes  of  leaders,  some  of  them  brilliant  and 
some  devout,  but  there  was,  as  men  sadly  saw,  no  sor- 
viving  Bernard !  i 

1  SiBmondi  is  acaroely  jnat  to  Bernard,  in  general,  thongli  dosciibing 
him  as  one  '*  qni,  par  la  vivadf  6  de  sa  foi,  T^nei^e  de  son  caracUra>  aoB 
actiyite  at  le  z^le  ardent  dont  il  ^toit  anim^,  a  m^rit^  d'dtie  range  panni 
les  p^res  de  T^lise."  He  describee  him  as  "  Ennemi  de  tonte  discussion, 
de  tout  examen,  de  toate  liberty"  and  says,  "il  vouloit  maintenir  la  soa- 
mission  ayeugle  des  s^jets  k  lenrs  princee,  et  dee  princes  k  lents  pi^tres.** 
But  of  his  work  on  behalf  of  Innocent  he  says :  '*  Le  zMe  que  saint  Ber- 
nard d^ployoit  en  favenr  d'Innocent  II,  multiplioit  cheque  jour  le  nombra 
des  partisans  de  ce  pape ;  I'activit^,  T^oquence,  Tenthousiasme  de  saint 
Bernard,  dont  le  savoir  ^tonnoit  son  si^e,  pesoient  d^jk  plus  dans  la 
balance  de  Topinion  pnbliqae,  que  toutes  les  iir^gularites  de  I'^ectioii 


IN  HIB  BELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.     645 

The  fact  in  his  public  life  which  stood  next  in  impor- 
tance to  this  establishment  of  Innocent  in  the  papal 
supremacy  was,  no  doubt,  his  championship  of  the  second 
Crusade ;  and  though  this  brought  disaster  after  it,  and 
inflicted  upon  him  keenest  suffering,  it  is  needful  to  any 
fair  estimate  of  his  life  that  we  bring  it  before  us. 

It  used  to  be  a  fashion  to  regard  the  Crusades  as  mere 
fantastic  exhibitions  of  a  temporary  turbulent  religious 
fanaticism,  aiming  at  ends  wholly  visionary  and  missing 
them,  wasting  the  best  life  of  Europe  in  colossal  and 
bloody  undertakings,  and  leaving  effects  only  of  evil  for 
the  time  which  came  after.  More  reasonable  views  now 
prevail ;  and  while  the  impulse  in  which  the  vast  move- 
ment took  its  rise  is  recognized  as  passionate  and  semi- 
barbaric,  it  is  seen  that  many  effects  followed  which 
were  beneficent  rather  than  harmful,  which  could  not 
perhaps  have  been  at  the  time  in  other  ways  realized. 
As  I  have  already  suggested,  properties  were  to  an  im- 
portant extent  redistributed  in  Europe,  and  the  consti- 
tution of  States  was  favorably  affected.  Lands  were 
sold,  at  low  prices,  by  those  who  were  going  on  the  dis- 
tant  expeditions,  very  probably,  as  they  knew,  never  to 
return ;  and  horses  and  armor,  with  all  martial  equip- 
ments, were  bought,  at  high  prices,  by  those  who  were  to 
need  them  on  the  march  and  in  the  battle.  So  nobles 
lost,  while  merchants  and  artisans  correspondingly 
gained.  Even  the  Jews,  who  could  not  hold  land,  and  the 
history  of  whom  throughout  the  Middle  Age  is  com- 
monly to  be  traced  in  fearful  lines  of  blood  and  fire,  in- 
creased immensely  their  movable  wealth,  through  these 
transfers  of  property.    Communes  bought  liberties,  by 

d'lnnooeut  II.,  faite  vwto  pr^fntation,  horn  dn  Hea  fizA  ptr  T^Iim,  et 
par  le  inoindre  nombre  d«B  cardinaiix."  —  SitL  de$  I^ra/mgaU,  torn.  v« 
pp.  S90,  869,  22S.    Ftais  ed.  1828* 

86. 


646  BEBNABD  09  GLAIBTAnZ  : 

large  contributions  to  the  need  of  their  lords;  and 
these  liberties,  once  secured,  were  naturally  confirmed 
and  augmented  as  the  years  went  on.  The  smaller 
fiefs  tended  to  be  absorbed  in  the  larger;  the  larger, 
often,  to  come  more  strictly  under  royal  control,  thus 
increasing  the  power  of  the  sovereign,  —  which  meant, 
at  the  time,  general  laws  instead  of  local,  a  less  mi- 
nutely oppressive  administration,  the  furtherance  of  the 
movement  toward  National  unity.  It  is  a  noticeable  fact 
that  Italy  took  but  a  small  part,  comparatively,  in  the 
Crusades ;  and  the  long  postponement  of  organic  union 
between  different  parts  of  the  magnificent  Peninsula  is 
not  without  relation  to  thia  The  influences  which  oper- 
ated elsewhere  in  Europe,  to  efface  distinctions  of  cus- 
tom and  language  in  separate  communities,  to  override 
and  extinguish  local  animosities,  to  make  scattered 
peoples  conscious  of  kinship,  did  not  operate  there; 
and  the  persistent  severance  of  sections  from  each  other, 
favored  of  course  by  the  run  of  the  rivers  and  the  vast 
separating  wall  of  the  Apennines,  was  the  natural  con- 
sequence of  the  want  of  this  powerful  unifying  force. 

Of  course  the  Church  wealth  was  vastly  increased, 
since  its  lands  could  not  be  alienated,  while  it  was  all 
the  time  gaining  lands,  by  purchase  or  by  ^ft.  But  the 
final  effect  of  this  was  to  expose  such  amassed  and 
exaggerated  wealth  to  more  determined  and  successful 
assault.  Tlie  structure  fell  sooner  because  of  its  inor- 
dinate height.  The  riches  would  have  been  safer  if  less 
rapidly  acquired,  and  less  disproportionate  to  the  wealth 
of  society.^    It  is  evident,  too,  that  the  Crusades,  though 

1  La  gruide  affaire  pour  1«b  aeigneara  qui  t'atoient  engaffb  k  la  eroiBada 
^toit  da  rassembler  Targent  nicMaira  poor  cette  ezpWtion.  Pnmfm 
tona  Atoiant  dispose  k  Tendra  lean  titrate  lean  drolls,  lean  aaignavriM ; 
mais  U  na  leor  itoit  paa  fiEM»le  de  troaver  dea  atoliataan.    Ua  na  tomnoiflBt 


IN  HIS  RELAnON  TO  GENERAL  BUBOPBAN  AFFAIB8.  647 

animated  and  fostered  by  religious  authority,  worked 
with  silent  constancy  toward  religious  enfranchisement. 
Populations  were  mobilized.  The  land  lost  a  part  of  its 
fettering  grip  on  both  baron  and  serf.  Knowledge  was 
increased  y  as  men  went  to  and  fro.  The  general  mind 
gained  larger  outlook.  A  new  standard  of  character 
was  presented  to  men,  very  imperfect,  often  undefined 
and  obscure,  but  in  which  an  active  consecration  to  duty 
to  some  extent  took  the  place  of  the  lazier  routine  of 
contemplations  and  formal  prayers.  As  at  every  great 
crisis,  too,  high  qualities  of  moral  life  came  to  the  front, 
and  took  a  just  pre-eminence  in  men's  thought  The 
knightly  champion  of  the  cross  was  more  exalted  in  tiie 
popular  esteem  than  the  bishop  who  tarried  amid  the 
pomps  of  his  palace.  The  heroic  valor  and  endurance 
of  laymen  contrasted  signally  the  too  frequent  indolence 
and  self-indulgence  of  monks. 

So,  by  degrees,  a  new  and  more  healthful  public  sen* 
timent  began  to  appear,  with  a  new  public  consciousness 
of  strength.  What  Christendom  could  do,  if  united  for 
a  purpose,  was  no  longer  a  dream;  and  more  liberal 
ideas  came  to  development  with  this  new  sense  of  a 
common  life,  opportunity,  power.    Nations  were  associ- 

pas  daDA  cet  espoir  lean  ngarda  yen  le  roi;  .  .  .  mats  1«b  ^y^ues,  1m 
abb^  et  tooa  los  iUblissemens  leligienz,  avoient  amaas^  dea  trtera,  qa*ila 
tehang^ront  avec  joie  oontra  dea  tems»  dea  chAteanx  et  dea  jnaticea  f^ 
dalea.  Ceux  panni  lea  yasaauz  da  aeconde  ordre,  lea  yicomtea  et  lea  aei- 
gnenrs,  qui  ne  partoient  paa  ponr  la  eroiaade,  achet^rent  anaai,  aaz  tennea 
lea  plna  ayantageoz,  da  lean  aazenina  on  de  lean  Toiaina,  dea  extenaiona 
de  privil^gea,  dea  fiefa  plua  aniplea,  oa  de  noavellea  aeigneariea.  Lea 
boargeoia  dea  villea  enfin  contribairent  aaaai  de  lear  boane  ;  et  lee  com- 
monea,  qai  jaaqa'alon  n'ayoient  ^t^  qae  dea  aasociationa  armfca,  contra 
Vordra,  oa  platdt  contra  le  d^rdra  ^tabli,  acqairant  k  priz  d'argent  one 
sanction  l^le,  qne  lean  aeigneura,  prasa^  de  poniroir  aaz  beaoina  da 
moment,  et  indUTerens  sar  I'avenir,  ne  lear  rafoa^rant  point.  —  818MOMDI : 
EitL  de$  Fran^aiB,  iv.  pp.  541-542. 


548  BERNABD  OF  CLAIBTlUZ: 

ated  in  a  general  entlinsiasm,  and  Europe  at  large 
became  more  than  ever  a  eelf-conscioos  agent  in  the 
history  of  ihe  world.^  The  comparative  elegance  of  the 
Greek  dvilization  made  at  the  same  time  its  impression 
on  those  from  the  ruder  and  rougher  West.  Even  the 
virtues  of  Mohammedans  came  to  be  eulogized  by  Chris- 
tian writers.  The  knights  of  the  Crusades  interchanged 
courtesies  with  Saracen  soldiers ;  and  Francis  of  Assisi, 
early  in  the  thirteenth  century,  a.  n.  1219,  preached,  as 
we  know,  before  the  Sultan  of  E^pt,  enthroned  at  tlie 
head  of  a  Mohammedan  army.  Diplomatic  relations 
were  at  length  initiated  between  Mongol  rulers  and 
Christian  kinirs.'     Meantime  maritime  commerce  was 


^  Le  premier  canct&re  des  eroiaedes,  e'eet  leor  uniTenalit^ ;  rfniope 
enti^  y  a  conconru ;  elles  oat  M  le  premier  ivinem»ni  earopien.  Avmat 
lee  croisadee,  on  n'aveit  jamais  yn  rEorope  e'emoavoir  d'on  mteie  eenti< 
ment»  agir  da&g  nne  mdme  cause  :  11  n'y  ayait  pas  d'Eorope.  Lee  cvoiaades 
ont  rirM  TEarope  chretienne.  .  .  .  Ge  n'eet  pas  tout ;  de  m^e  que  les 
eroiiadee  sont  on  ^T^nement  enrop^en,  de  m£me»  dans  chaqae  pays,  eUes 
sont  on  ^v^oement  national ;  dans  chaqae  pays,  tontes  les  clawnwi  de  U 
soci^t^  s'animent  de  la  mtaie  impreision,  oMissent  k  U  m&ne  id^  s*aban- 
donnent  an  mdme  ^lan.  Bois,  seignenrs,  prdtres,  bouigeois,  people  des 
campagnes ;  tons  prennent  aux  croiaades  le  mdme  int^r^t,  la  m6me  part. 
L'nnit^  morale  des  nations  delate;  fait  aussi  nouvean  que  Tonit^  eoio- 
p^nne.  —  GtrizoT :  Hitt.  de  la  Civil,  en  Europe,  pp.  220-221. 

*  0*est  \k  le  premier,  le  principal  effet  des  croiaades,  an  grand  pas  Tefs 
raffrancliiasement  de  I'esprit,  an  grand  progrte  yers  des  id^es  plos  tondaes, 
pins  libres.  .  .  .  Nnl  doate  qae  la  soci^ti  grecqne,  quoiqae  sa  ciTiliaatuni 
fiftt  ^nery^,  perrertie,  monrante,  ne  fit  ear  les  crois^  reffet  d'nne  soci^bi 
plos  ayancie,  plos  polie,  plos  iclsir^e  que  la  leor.  La  soei^t^  moatol- 
mane  lenr  fat  an  spectacle  de  mdme  nature.  .  .  .  Les  erois^  de  leor 
cdt^  furent  frapp^s  de  ce  qu'il  y  ayait  de  ricbesses,  d'il^nce  de  moenrs 
ohez  les  rausulmans.  A  cette  premi^  impreasion  saocM^rent  bientdt  entre 
les  deuK  peuples  de  freqaentes  relations.  Non-seulement  les  Chretiens 
d'Orient  ayalent  ayec  les  musulmans  des  rapports  habituels,  mats  rOeci- 
dent  et  rOrient  se  connarent,  se  yisit&rent,  se  mfil^rent.  .  . .  Des  amfasasa- 
deurs  mongols  furent  enyoy^  sax  rois  francs,  k  saint  Louis  entre  antral 
pour  les  engager  k  entrer  en  allianoe  et  k  recommencer  des  croiaades  dans 
rint^rfit  coromun  des  Mongols  et  des  chrdtiens  centre  les  Tares.  — Ounor: 
Siai,  de  la  CivU.  en  Europe,  pp.  227-229. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.     549 

largely  extended,  and  cities  sprang  from  it,  or  arose  by 
means  of  it  to  new  riches  and  power,  as  the  goddess 
ascended  from  the  crest  of  the  wave.  The  knowledge 
of  the  geographical  distribations  of  the  world  was  im- 
mensely extended ;  and  it  is  a  fact  of  interest  to  us,  and 
to  mankind,  that  in  trying  to  reach  the  lands  which 
Marco  Paulo  had  visited  and  described  in  the  thirteenth 
century,  immediately  after  the  last  Crusade,  Columbus 
found  his  way  to  this  continent.  The  hands  of  the  cru- 
saders of  three  centuries  earlier  were  really  pushing  the 
discovering  ships  across  the  Atlantic. 

In  a  word,  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  a  great  awak- 
ening of  the  European  mind,  with  enlargement  of  its 
knowledge,  and  a  keen  invigoration  of  its  general 
thought,  came  from  the  Crusades ;  that  greater  Individ- 
ual  liberty  resulted,  with  greater  simultaneous  political 
unity  ;  and  that  the  excessive  localization  of  rights  and 
obligations,  natural  to  the  feudal  system,  was  so  far 
broken  as  to  be  replaced,  in  orderly  sequence,  by  the 
more  general  administration  and  the  larger  combina- 
tions out  of  which  has  come  the  modern  political  sys- 
tem of  the  Continent.^    Nor  were  their  moral  effects 

1  Nous  d«Toiii  ^oat«r  que  U  n^oearit^,  pour  I«b  Tiineui  «t  ks  Tain* 
qQean,  de  oonunoniqQer  entre  emc,  dot  eontribuer  k  T^pandn  U  Imngue 
latine  pftnni  les  Qrecs,  et  U  Ungae  gncqae  panni  les  LatinB.  Lea  peaplea 
de  la  Grtce  fiirent  oblig^  d'approndre  I'idiome  da  cUrgi  de  Rome,  pour 
faire  entendre  lenra  riclamatiooi  et  leara  plaintea;  lea  ecd^aiastiqaea 
ehargfo  par  le  pape  de  convertir  lea  Oreoa  ne  puent  ae  diapenaer  d'^tndier 
la  langue  de  Platon  et  de  D^oath^ne,  poor  enaeigner  aoz  diaciplea  de 
Photina  lea  r6nt6s  de  la  religion  cathoUqne  et  lomaioe. — MiOHAim :  EUL 
dei  OroisadeSt  torn.  ill.  pp.  246-247. 

La  France  fat  le  royaame  de  rOccident  qoi  proftta  le  jdos  dea  eroiaadea, 
et  oea  graada  ^v^nementa  ^ont^rant  aartoat  k  la  force  de  la  royaat^,  par 
laqaelle  la  dviliaation  derait  arriTer.  D^  le  tempa  dea  goerrea  aaintea, 
on  ne  a4pandt  ploa  U  nation  fTan9aiae  de  aea  roia ;  et  tel  ^tait  Teaprit  dea 
peaplea^  qa'an  Tieaz  panjgyiiate  de  Saint  Loaia  ne  eroit  ponyoir  mieoz 


650  BERNARD  OP  GLAIBYAUZ  : 

wholly  disastrous,  in  spite  of  the  terrible  erils  and 
abases  to  which  our  thoughts  naturally  turn.  It  was 
something,  surely,  amid  the  wild  license  of  the  times, 
and  the  desperate  fierceness  of  predatory  wars,  to  hear 
what  seemed  the  voice  of  God  calling  men  to  remote 
and  unselfish  endeavors ;  and  I  cannot  but  believe  that 
they  were  not  few  who,  in  hearing  that  voice  and  obey* 
ing  its  behests,  awoke  to  a  nobler  spiritual  life.  It  was 
something  to  have  the  Oospel-story  set  on  high  before 
the  general  mind,  and  to  have  nations  allied  for  what 
seemed  a  service  to  the  Heavenly  King. 

In  these  Crusades  the  French  took  from  the  first,  as 
all  know,  a  leading  part ;  so  far  surpassing  other  peoples 
in  the  numbers  which  they  sent,  and  in  tiieir  successes, 
that  the  word  ^^  Frank "  remains  to  this  day  in  large 
parts  of  the  East  the  equivalent  of  ^^  European."  Such 
an  enterprise  suited  the  sensibility  of  the  nation,  as  it 
was  becoming  more  proper  to  call  it,  —  its  adventurous, 
imaginative,  and  uncalculating  spirit ;  and  so  for  a  cen- 
tury and  three  quarters,  from  the  Council  of  Clermont, 
in  ▲.  D.  1095,  to  the  death  of  Louis  Ninth,  in  ▲•  n.  1270, 

hoDorer  la  m^moire  da  monarqae  fnn^ais  qa*en  pftrlant  dea  meiTeUlet  et 
d*  U  gloiro  de  U  Panoe.  —  Miohaud  :  Mid,  des  GroUads^,  torn.  vi.  p.  1«7. 

Las  commones,  qui  tiraient  leur  origine  des  pragr^  da  oommero6»  ne 
n^ligealeat  point  de  prot^r  rindastrie ;  et,  dans  lea  eontrats  d'asso- 
oiation,  dee  dispositions  formeUes  mettaient  toujoars  lea  marchands  <tnui> 
gers  k  rabri  de  la  peroration  et  des  brigandages.  .  .  .  Nons  ajoaterons 
qa'k  leor  depart  les  comtes  et  lea  barons  avaient  besoin  d'aigant^  et  q«e 
poar  en  ayoir  ils  ^taient  obligte  de  fiore  des  concessions.  Us  STaiant 
encore  plos  besoin  d'ai^nt  k  lear  retour,  et  montraient  les  mfimes  dispo- 
sitions k  o^dep  qaelqae  chose  de  lears  droits.  ^Ibid.,  t1.  pp.  869, 271-272. 

On  doit  ^oater  qoe  les  orois^s,  qoi  partaient  de  toutes  lea  contrte  de 
TEarope,  apprirent  k  se  oonnaitre  entre  eox  sous  T^tendard  de  la  eroix. 
Les  peoples  ne  furent  pins  Strangers  les  ans  poar  les  aaties,  os  qoi  dissipa 
rignorance  oil  ik  etaient  sar  les  noms  des  Tilles  et  des  proTinoea  de  TOcci* 
dM&t-^/M.,  tL  p.  808. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.    551 

its  blood  and  treasure  were  freely  expended  in  this  dis- 
tant and  costly  service.  In  France  the  impulse  which 
electrified  the  peoples  was  first  sent  forth.  In  France 
the  second  great  movement  had  its  origin,  the  push  of 
which  was  felt  by  after  generations;  and  the  power 
which  carried  this  to  its  astonishing  primary  success 
was  largely  the  power  which  belonged  to  the  swift  and 
invincible  spirit  of  the  extraordinary  abbot  of  Clairvaux. 
This  has  already  been  briefly  noticed,  but  it  should  be 
before  us  more  distinctly. 

Bernard  was  every  whit  a  Frenchman,  in  sensibility 
and  responsiveness  to  great  public  conceptions,  in  chi- 
valric  courage,  and  impetuous  enterprise.  The  inspiring 
enthusiasm  which  had  swept  through  the  kingdom  while 
he  was  a  child  would  have  found  none  readier  to  accept 
it  if  he  had  then  been  of  mature  age.  The  stir  of  that 
impassioned  Crusade  must  have  blended  itself  with  his 
earliest  recollections,  for  he  was  a  boy  of  five  years  old 
when  Peter  the  Hermit  with  fiery  eloquence  carried  the 
cross  and  the  war-cry  through  France.  His  father,  Tesce- 
lin,  had  not  gone  to  the  East,  but  his  almost  royal  feudal 
superior,  Hugh  of  Burgundy,  had  been  one  of  the  com- 
pany which  went  out  in  the  first  year  of  the  twelfth 
century.  He  had  died  in  the  East,  and  his  body  had 
been  brought  back  from  thence  to  be  buried  at  Citeaux. 
Bernard  was  at  that  time  eleven  years  old,  and  the  ivi- 
pression  on  his  intense  mind  of  the  distant  journey  and 
lonely  death,  the  great  Greek  cities^  the  desert  wastes, 
the  turrets  of  Jerusalem  and  their  swarthy  defenders, 
the  fierce  assault  and  sanguinary  success,  with  the  sol- 
emn crypt  which  was  all  that  at  last  was  left  to  knightly 
valor,  —  one  can  hardly  imagine  any  other  impression 
more  distinct  or  more  influential. 

Fifty  years  had  passed  since  the  first  Crusade  had  had 


652  BEBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX: 

inception  at  the  ConncQ  of  Clermont.  The  leaden  of  H 
were  in  their  graves ;  but  the  Latin  kingdom  established 
in  Palestine  by  their  valor  and  sacrifice  had  seemed  to 
remain  substantially  secure,  when  suddenly  on  the  one 
hand  the  Mohammedans  were  united,  under  Zenghis, 
Emir  of  Mosul,  a  bom  and  bold  commander  of  men, 
while  the  Christians  were  divided  by  factious  strife,  the 
rivalries  of  leaders,  and  private  wars.  The  descendants 
of  the  crusaders  had  grown  luxurious  and  dissolute  un- 
der Eastern  skies.  Fortress  after  fortress  had  fallen  into 
infidel  hands,  until  at  last  Edessa  itself,  whose  earliest 
Christian  king,  Abgarus,  was  reputed  to  have  been  a  con* 
temporary  of  Christ,  to  have  had  a  personal  correspond- 
ence with  Him,^  and  to  have  received  a  picture  of  Him, 
was  taken  by  assault,  and  its  inhabitants  were  slain 
with  merciless  carnage.  Noureddin,  who  soon  followed 
Zenghis  in  the  Mohammedan  leadership,  was  reasonably 
supposed  to  be  able  to  threaten  Jerusalem  itself,  as  Sala- 
din,  his  brilliant  Eoordish  successor,  did  actually  take  it 
in  A.  D.  1187.  Men  saw  already  in  anticipation  what 
those  then  witnessed  who  were  left  in  Jerusalem,  the 
cross  torn  from  the  summit  of  the  temple,  and  dragged 
for  days  through  the  mire  of  the  streets.  The  holy 
places  were  thus  to  come  again,  it  was  now  feared,  into 
infidel  hands,  and  all  the  blood  lavishly  shed  upon  the 
steeps  and  sands  of  the  East  was  to  prove  for  Christen- 
dom a  useless  libation. 

At  this  time,  therefore,  came  the  suggestion  of  a 
second  Crusade.  The  young  Louis  Seventh,  then  on  the 
throne,  was  eager  for  it,  though  Suger,  his  minister, 
energetically  opposed  the  vast  and  exhausting  foreign 
expedition.  Three  assemblies  were  successively  con- 
vened to  consider  the  scheme,  —  at  Bourges,  at  Christ- 

J^  Tor  what  pozport  to  be  the  letten,  lee  Eiiiebiii%  Uk  l  eepu  xiii 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.     558 

mas,  A.  D.  1145,  at  Y^zelai,  at  Easter,  a.  d.  1146,  and  at 
Stampes,  a.  d.  1147,  —  and  at  each  of  these  Bernard  was 
present.  He  had  then  reached  the  age  of  fifty-five  years. 
The  freshness  of  youth,  and  the  relative  strength  of  mid- 
dle life,  alike  had  gone.  He  was  worn  and  broken  by 
weariness  and  sickness,  prematurely  old,  and  increas- 
ingly anxious  to  remain  in  his  convent,  and  take  no 
further  prominent  part  in  public  affairs.^  But  the  com- 
bined voices  of  king  and  pontiff  were  too  imperative  to 
be  disobeyed,  and  they  only  articulated  the  common  wish 
of  both  kingdom  and  ChurcL  So  he  came  to  do  what 
to  him  was  the  work  of  God ;  and  so  he  stood  before  the 
assemblies,  weak  and  heroic,  emaciated  and  masterful, 
seeming  equally  compact  of  feebleness  and  of  fire. 

At  Bourges  he  counselled  a  present  delay,  till  the 
judgment  of  the  pontiff  on  the  matter  should  be  fully 
declared,  while  meantime  he  wrote  to  him  a  stirring 
letter,  exhorting  him  vehemently,  as  he  afterward  did, 
to  promptness,  courage,  and  great  action;  reminding 
him  that  in  a  cause  so  noble  and  so  general  things  were 
not  to  be  done  tepidly  or  timidly ;  that  it  is  the  part  of 

1  Two  yearn  before  (a.  d.  1143)  he  had  written  to  Peter  of  Clngni : 
"Decretam  est  mihi  ultra  non  egredi  monasterio,  niai  ad  oonventom 
abbatnm  Cisterdum  eemel  in  anno.  Hie  fultna  orationibna  yestria,  et 
benedictioniboa  consolatua,  pauda  diebna,  quiboa  none  milito,  ezpecto 
donee  veniat  immutatio  mea.  Propitiaa  dt  mihi  DenSy  at  non  amoveat 
orationem  Testram  et  miaerioordiam  anam  a  me.  Fraotna  aom  Tiriboa,  ek 
legitimam  habeo  excuaationemy  nt  jam  non  poedm  diacnrrere  nt  solebam. 
Sedebo  et  silebo,  d  forte  experiar  qnod  do  plenitndine  intimn  snaritatia 
•anctua  propheta  emctat:  'Bonnm  eat,' inqniensy  'ezspectare  Dominnm 
in  flilentio.' "  —  Opera^  toL  prim.,  epist.  oozzviii.  ooL  462. 

Two  yeara  later  he  wrote  to  Engenioa:  ''Hino  eat  qnod  litterpD  ists 
non  sunt  Tolnntatia^  eed  neceadtatis,  et  amioomm  eztortn  predboe,  qni- 
bna  negare  non  poasnm  modicum  illad  qnidqnid  reddnom  est  Tite  men. 
Jam  enim  de  reliqno  breves  erant  dies  mei,  et  eolnm  mihi  anpereat  aepnl* 
chmm.  —  OptrOf  Tol.  prim.,  epiat  cczxxriiL  col.  499. 


554  BERNABD  OP  CLAIRVAUX: 

brave  men  to  show  a  spirit  rising  with  the  occasion,  and 
to  be  boldest  when  difficulties  are  greatest ;  and  that  it 
was  especially  his  part,  as  the  successor  of  Peter,  not 
now  to  be  wanting  in  holy  zeal.^  The  Papal  bull  soon 
followed,  approving  the  Crusade,  and  appointing  Bernard 
to  preach  it,  in  place  of  the  pope  who  for  the  present 
could  not  leave  Rome.  At  V^zelai,  therefore,  in  Easter 
week,  vast  crowds  were  assembled,  whom  the  eloquence 
of  Bernard  again  swayed  and  inspired  with  irresistible 
force.  The  king  and  queen  were  in  attendance,  with 
many  of  the  greater  peers  and  prelates,  and  a  multitude 
of  men-at-arms,  and  with  a  vast  gathering  of  the  neigh- 
boring populations.  In  the  absence  of  any  church  or 
square  large  enough  to  contain  them,  they  were  gathered 
around  a  hill,  on  which  was  raised  a  platform  for  the 
preacher.  It  was  not  of  the  wealth  and  fame  which  might 
be  acquired  in  Oriental  expeditions,  but  of  the  sufferings 
of  Christians  there  that  Bernard  spoke,  of  the  profana- 
tion of  the  places  trodden  by  Christ,  of  the  summons  to 
every  Christian  heart  made  by  the  need  and  the  duty  of 
the  hour ;  and  men  as  they  heard  him,  or  even  as  they 
saw  his  thin  figure  and  spiritual  face  kindled  and  glori- 
fied with  transcendent  emotion,  lost  control  of  their 
minds.  It  was  as  if  skies  silent  above  them  had  broken 
into  sudden  speech.  The  reluctance  of  nobles  was  over- 
come ;  the  memory  of  past  disaster  was  revived  only  to 
move  them  to  a  higher  self-sacrifice ;  the  hesitation  of 
the  prudent  was  swept  away  in  the  impetuous  rush  of 
general  excitement,  and  the  enthusiasm,  like  that  of  a 
half-century  before,  again  surged  over  the  stimulated 
France.  Robes  and  mantles  were  again  torn  up  to  fur- 
nish crosses.  The  queen,  the  king's  brother,  many 
knights  of  renown,  many  bishops,  with  the  king  him- 

1  YoL  prim.,  epiBt  odvi  cdl.  588-^4a 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN   AFFAIRS.     555 

self,  and  a  multitude  of  soldiers  and  of  the  people,  re- 
ceived the  cross,  and  were  passionately  committed  to  the 
new  expedition.  In  spite  of  all  diflSculties,  in  spite  of 
his  own  physical  infirmities,  the  West  was  roused  by  the 
great  abbot  to  face  again,  and  if  possible  to  conquer, 
the  distant  East.  It  was  the  honor  of  the  Church  and 
the  glory  of  the  Lord  which  stirred  him  to  the  work. 

At  Ghartres,  a  little  later,  another  assembly  was  con- 
vened, and  successively  others  at  many  cities,  where  the 
same  phenomena  appeared,  —  strong  men  carried  ont  of 
themselves  by  the  voice  of  one  who  had  hardly  strength 
to  hold  himself  up,  the  delicate  figure  sending  forth  its 
prodigal  impulse  as  if  an  ocean  were  gushing  from  a 
brook.  At  Chartres  the  multitudes  clamorously  insisted 
that  Bernard  himself  should  lead  the  Crusade;^  but 
they  might  as  well  have  tried  to  upset  the  Alps.  ^^  You 
may  be  sure,"  he  wrote  to  the  pope,  ^^  that  it  is  not  of 
my  counsel  or  will,  and  has  no  possibility  in  it.  ...  I 
beseech  you,  by  the  love  which  you  owe  me,  that  you 
will  not  deliver  me  over  to  these  human  desires."' 
After  the  prodigious  work  of  the  summer  he  went 
toward  the  close  of  the  year  into  Grermany,  the  enthusi- 
astic spirit  again  lifting  and  liberating  the  debilitated 
body,  and  there  also,  with  princes,  peoples,  the  empe- 
ror himself,  his  appeals  proved  of  irresistible  force. 
This  was  the  more  remarkable  because  the  language 
in  which  he  spoke  must  have  been  unfamiliar  to  most 
of  those  who  heard  him,*  and  because  Germany  had 

1  BaroniiiB,  Ecd.  Annal.,  an.  1146,  torn,  xriii  ^  6S8.  Hoc  decretom 
in  Coneilio  oonsensa  omnimn. 

'  YoL  prim,  epist.  odvi  ool.  540. 

*  The  testimony  on  this  point  is  explicit :  *'  Inde  emt  quod  Oennanicis 
etiam  popolis  loquens  nuro  andiefaatnr  affectn,  et  ez  sermone  ejus  qnem 
intelligere,  nt  pote  alterins  lingua  homines,  non  valebant,  magis  quam 
ax  peiitissimi  cigoslibet  post  enm  loqnentis  inteipratis  intellecta  locutions^ 


556  BEBKABD  OP  CLAIRYAinC  : 

always  heretofore  been  sluggish  if  not  hostile  toward 
the  Crusade.  It  had  taken  no  part  as  an  empire  in  the 
first  expedition.  It  was  divided  by  bitter  feuds.  Hostility 
to  the  papacy,  and  suspicion  of  its  designs,  widely  pre- 
vailed among  all  classes ;  and  the  emperor  Conrad  had 
but  recently  come  to  the  throne.  An  extraordinary  power 
was  manifestly  needed  to  push  the  impulse  generated  in 
France  into  the  regions  beyond  the  Rhine;  and  that 
power  resided  alone  in  the  spirit  of  Bernard.  He  took 
up  the  work  without  hesitation,  and  threw  himself  into  it 
with  a  self-regardless  consecration  at  which  even  his 
friends  were  amazed.  I  have  spoken  already  of  the  ser- 
mon which  conquered  the  reluctance  of  the  emperor. 
Elsewhere  the  story  was  always  the  same,  —  populations 
stirred  as  if  a  spell  had  been  laid  upon  them;  cities 
whirled  into  excitements  that  seemed  paroxysmal ;  mul- 
titudes set  in  eager  movement  for  the  camp  and  the 
march.  According  to  his  own  testimony  castles  and 
towns  were  almost  left  vacant,  and  few  men  remained 
for  the  business  of  the  world.^  According  to  the  testi- 
mony of  those  who  attended  him,  the  most  astonish- 
ing miracles  were  only  the  customary  incidents  of  his 
progress,  of  which  the  narratives,  fervently  sincere,  and 
often  carefully  circumstantial,  fill  many  pages.*  His 
affectionate  sympathy  for  the  suffering  and  the  sick  ap- 
peared something  celestial,  while  nothing  was  thought 
too  vast  for  his  power.  He  seemed  to  men  the  imme- 
diate personal  representative  of  the  Lord,  again  walking 
the  earth  with  patient  feet,  with  the  Divine  light  in  his 

adificari  illonim  devotio  videbatar,  et  yerboram  ejus  mtgis  sentin  Tilts* 
tern ;  cigos  rei  oerta  probatio  tansio  pectoram  erat,  et  eflEusio  lacryntamiiL'* 
—  (^pera,  toL  sec,  Vita»  i.  lib.  iii.  cap.  8,  ooL  8194. 

^  Opera,  vol.  prim.,  epist  ccxMi.  (ad  Engeninm)  ooU.  520-581. 

s  VoL  sec.,  Vita,  L  Ub.  yi.  ooU.  227£K2a25»  H  oL 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  OENBBAL  EUBOPEAN  AFFAIB3.    557 

eyes,  and  the  power  of  a  tender  omnipotence  in  his 
hands.  It  was  not  long  before  (Germany  showed,  in 
leaders  and  people,  the  same  surprising  exaltation  of 
spirit  which  had  already  been  mantfest  in  France.  The 
supremacy  of  the  inspiring  mind  was  more  miraculous 
than  all  physical  wonders. 

Returning  from  Germany,  after  a  few  days  of  rest  at 
Glair vaux,  he  was  again  at  the  assembly  at  ^tampes, 
where  routes  were  to  be  chosen  for  the  crusading  armies, 
and  a  regent  to  be  appointed  for  the  kingdom  during 
the  prospective  absence  of  the  king.  The  abbot  Suger  and 
the  count  Nevers  were  named  by  Bernard,  on  behalf  of  the 
nobles  and  high  ecclesiastics  to  whom  the  selection  had 
been  committed.  The  count  absolutely  refused  the  office, 
and  the  abbot  only  reluctantly  accepted  it,  under  the  pos- 
itive command  of  the  pope,  though  he  subsequently  ac- 
complished its  manifold  duties  with  such  fidelity  and  such 
signal  success  as  demonstrated  the  wisdom  of  the  choice 
of  Bernard.  This  was  in  February,  a.  d.  1147.  Another 
visit  to  Oermany  followed,  to  finish  the  work  there 
auspiciously  begun,  and  now  prosperously  advanced ; 
and  our  nerves  are  rested,  whether  his  were  or  not,  when 
we  know  that  probably  after  that  he  had  some  weeks  of 
refreshment  at  Clairvaux,  before  meeting  the  pope, 
Eugenius  Third,  at  Paris,  and  setting  out  on  a  new  series 
of  hardly  less  arduous  labors  and  struggles.  Before  the 
end  of  June  the  French  army  was  on  the  way  to  the 
Holy  Land,  having  been  preceded  a  little  by  the  German 
army  with  the  emperor  at  its  head.  With  the  French 
king  went  Eleanor,  his  wife,  daughter  of  that  William  of 
Aquitaine  whose  fierce  will  had  been  broken  twelve  years 
before  by  the  terrible  energy  of  Bernard ;  and  the  wives 
of  many  of  the  knighta  went  with  them,  with  otlier  women 
whose  presence  became  a  source  of  weakness  and  disaster. 


658  BBBNA8D  OF  GLAIBYAUZ: 

Distaffs  were  sent  hj  soornful  friends  to  the  able-bodied 
men  who  tarried  at  home ;  so  that  it  may  almost  literally 
be  said  that  all  France,  which  had  been  in  part  reluctant 
at  first,  with  Germany,  which  had  been  distinctly  an» 
willing,  werp  launched  upon  this  second  Crusade  by  the 
preaching  of  Bernard,  not  less  directly  than  the  similar 
armies  of  fifty  years  before  had  been  started  by  the 
preaching  of  Peter  the  Hermit.  He  represented  the 
pontiff  in  it,  but  his  own  mind  was  stirred  to  its  centre 
by  the  impassioned  inspiring  thought  of  holy  places, 
hallowed  by  Christ,  preserved  for  the  reverent  occupation 
of  His  people ;  of  the  hill  on  which  His  cross  had  been 
set,  made  the  possession  of  those  who  by  that  cross  had 
been  redeemed ;  of  the  sepulchre,  from  which  His  body 
had  risen,  retained  by  the  Church  whose  cradle  it  had 
been;  of  the  mount  of  the  Ascension,  forevermore 
crowned  with  His  advanced  and .  victorious  standard. 
^^  Mistaken,"  we  call  it,  and  so  doubtless  it  was ;  but  it 
was  as  truly  an  ideal  enthusiasm  as  that  of  any  one  who 
has  sought  to  perform  his  missionary  work  in  distant 
lands,  or  has  wrought  into  permanent  laws  and  institu* 
tions  the  principles  of  equity  and  the  temper  of  love. 
And  it  must  forever  remain  an  example,  eminent  and 
shining,  of  what  an  enthusiasm  that  is  careless  of  ob- 
stacle and  fearless  of  danger  can  accomplish. 

The  issue  was  disastrous,  as  we  know,  for  reasons  as 
obvious  as  are  the  relations  of  Lebanon  to  the  sea.  The 
result  is  all  with  which  we  have  concern.  Beaching 
Palestine  with  only  fragments  of  broken  armies,  and 
visiting  Jerusalem  rather  as  pilgrims  than  as  warriors, 
the  emperor  and  the  king  besieged  Damascus,  failed  to 
capture  it,  relinquished  wholly  any  attempt  to  rescue 
Edessa,  and  at  length  returned  to  Europe  with  the 
shattered  remnants  of  magnificent  hosts  in  utmost  weak- 


IN  HIS  BELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS*    669 

ness  and  confusion.  The  rage  of  the  disappointed  peoples, 
bereaved  of  friends,  stripped  of  moneys,  not  so  much 
humbled  as  exasperated  by  tremendous  defeat,  smote 
Bernard  with  furious  reproach,  as  the  author  of  their 
griefs,  the  blind  leader  who  had  led  them  into  the 
deadly  ditch.  This  came,  too,  at  a  time  when  he  was 
by  no  means  as  able  to  bear  it  as  he  would  have  been 
earlier,  while  his  forces  were  in  the  freshness  of  mature 
strength.  He  felt  the  prodigious  disappointment  of  his 
hopes,  perhaps  more  keenly  than  any  other  in  either  of 
the  kingdoms ;  but  the  popular  wrath,  succeeding  the 
years  of  universal  affectionate  reverence,  hardly  seems 
to  have  disturbed  him.  He  had  sought  to  please  Gk>d 
rather  than  man ;  and  the  thought  tliat  in  this  he  had 
not  succeeded  was  the  only  thing  that  could  throw  him 
from  his  balance.  So  far  as  man's  anger  was  concerned, 
he  showed  no  care  and  made  no  moan.  It  is  very  certain 
that  the  most  desperate  effort  to  bum  him  alive  would 
not  have  wrung  such  from  him.  In  writing  briefly  to  the 
pope  Eugenius  on  the  matter,  some  months  later,  he 
braced  himself  upon  the  fact  that  in  urging  the  Crusade 
he  had  spoken,  not  his  own  mind  alone,  but  that  of  the 
pontiff,  which  was  to  him  as  the  mind  of  Christ ;  that  the 
judgments  of  Ood  were  past  finding  out,  though  true  and 
righteous  altogether ;  that  even  under  the  leadership  of 
Moses,  the  servant  of  Ood,  the  Israelites  had  suffered 
terrible  things,  and  those  who  went  out  with  him  had 
failed  to  reach  the  Land  of  Promise ;  that  many  of  the 
crusaders,  like  the  Israelites,  had  proved  unworthy  of 
Divine  favor  ;  and  that,  for  himself,  his  conscience  was 
clear :  he  had  felt  that  God  was  with  him  in  preach- 
ing the  Crusade,  and  he  was  ready  to  accept  any 
abuse  if  only  men  would  not  murmur  against  Him.  It 
would  be  to  him  a  blessing  if  the  Most  High  would  use 


660  "g^WAttn  OF  CLAIBYAUX: 

him  as  a  buckler,  to  intercept  blasphemiee   against 


Having  said  so  mnch  he  went  cahnlj  on,  amid  the 
whirlwind  of  popular  fury,  and  in  the  very  crisis  of  his 
personal  griefs,  to  compose  or  to  complete  the  greatest  of 
his  works, — that  on  ^^  Consideration,"  addressed  to  the 
pope.  The  book  has  remained,  from  that  day  to  this, 
the  mirror  of  his  thought  concerning  a  tme  pastor  of 
Christendom.  The  image  presented  in  it  is  one  beside 
which  many  of  the  pontiffs,  as  presented  in  their  annals, 
are  but  hideous  caricatures  of  a  lofty  and  holy  ideal; 
beside  which  Eugenius  himself  may  have  well  been 
abashed.  The  man  whose  eloquence,  whose  energy,  and 
whose  counsel  had  largely  quickened  and  governed 
Europe  for  thirty  years,  with  paternal  affection  and  a 
judicial  severity  admonished  him  who  was  the  nominal 
head  of  the  Church  to  cultivate  the  modesty,  humility, 
spirituality,  which  the  Lord  required,  and  of  which  we 
find  in  his  own  career  an  illustrious  example ;  he  re- 
minded the  pontiff,  with  loving  sternness,  of  the  vast 

^  Caoorrimas  plane  in  eo,  non  qnasi  in  iuoertom,  sed  jnbente  te,  imo 
per  te  Deo.  .  .  •  £t  qaidem  jadida  Domini  yen :  qnis  neaeiat  f  At  jndi- 
oium  hoc  abyasua  tanta,  ut  videar  mihi  non  immerito  pionnntiare  beatnm, 
qui  non  ftierit  acandalizatna  in  eo«  .  .  .  Moyaee  ednctnnia  populnm  de 
terra  iEgypti,  meliorem  illis  polHcitos  eat  terrain.  Ednxit ;  ednctoe  tamen 
in  terram,  quam  promiMrat,  non  introdazit.  Kec  eat  qnod  dncia  temeri- 
tati  imputari  queat  triatia  et  inopinatna  eventna.  .  .  .  Bene,  iUi  incrednU 
et  rebellea ;  hi  antem  qoid  ?  Ipaoa  interroga.  Quid  me  dicere  opoa  eat, 
qnod  fatentur  ipai  ?  .  .  .  Unde  acimna  qnod  a  Domino  aermo  egreaaos  ait  ? 
Qua  aigna  tu  facia,  ut  credamua  tibi  f  Parcendum  yereenndin  mes.  Be- 
aponde  tn  pro  me  et  pro  te  ipso,  secundum  ea  qu»  andiati,  et  yidisti ;  ant 
oerte  aeenndum  qnod  tibi  inapirayerit  Dene.  .  .  .  Perfecta  et  absolnta 
caique  exouaatio,  teatimoninm  consoientin  aoa.  .  .  .  Bonum  mihi,  si  dig- 
netur  me  uti  clypeo.  labens  ezcipio  in  me  detrahentium  linguae  male- 
dicaa,  et  yenenata  apicnla  blasphemorum,  ut  non  ad  ipsum  peryeniant 
Non  recuao  ingloriua  fieri,  ut  non  irruatur  in  Dei  gloiiaoL  —  CJparo,  toL 
prim.,  De  Gonaideratione,  lib.  iL  cap.  1,  coll.  1081-24. 


IN  HIS  BELATION  TO  GENEBAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIBS.    661 

reBponsibility  which  attended  his  power,  and  of  that 
supreme  final  account  which  he  could  nowise  fail  to 
render,  at  the  approaching  tribunal  of  the  Master,  to 
Him  whose  minister  and  servant  he  was.  There  is  no 
single  work  of  Bernard  in  which  his  spirit  is  more  clearlj 
or  more  tranquilly  revealed;  none  which  is  a  better 
memorial  of  him.  And  it  was  written,  in  what  he  him- 
self styled  ^^  the  season  of  his  misfortunes  "  —  when  the 
nations  which  had  recently  been  thrilled  with  his  elo- 
quence, astounded  by  his  amazing  works,  and  pushed 
by  his  energy  to  magnificent  enterprise,  were  stirred 
by  griefs  too  deep  for  tears,  and  hot  with  a  rage  that 
made  the  air  like  a  fiery  furnace.  I  know  of  no  one  who 
could  better  have  taken  to  himself  the  ancient  words : 
<^  In  the  time  of  trouble  He  shall  hide  me  in  His  pavilion ; 
in  the  secret  of  His  tabernacle  shall  He  hide  me ;  He 
shall  set  me  up  upon  a  rock ; ''  ^^  In  the  shadow  of  Thy 
wings  will  I  make  my  refuge,  until  these  calamities  be 
overpast."  * 

It  would  be  delightful,  but  it  is  of  course  impossible 
within  the  present  fast  narrowing  limits,  to  follow  his 
career  into  other  particulars,  and  to  show  how  the  same 
devoted,  intrepid,  and  masterful  spirit  revealed  itself  else- 
where, indeed  in  the  whole  conduct  of  his  life.  It  natu- 
rally reminds  one  of  the  musical  but  powerful  stream, 
which  sometimes  flows  quietly  in  well-worn  channels, 
sometimes  spreads  out  in  tranquil  abundance  into  shin- 
ing lake-expanses,  while  again,  with  a  force  apparently 
augmented  by  interruption  and  swelling  through  de- 
lays, it  pours  itself  with  conquering  onset  on  what  has 
opposed  it,  and  breaking  or  cutting  its  way  through 
obstacles  takes  up  once  more  its  quiet  and  reviving 
course.     Only  one  or  two  matters  not  yet  referred  to 

^  PialmB  zxYii  6,  ItiL  1. 
86 


562  BBHIBD  OF  GLAIBTAUX 


maj  I  touch  upon  briefly,  before  closiiig  this  too  brief 
account  of  a  man  so  remarkable  in  character  and  in 
work. 

The  broad  range  of  Us  drcumapect  care  over  what 
affected  the  intereata  of  the  Church  ia  ahown  clearly — 
Dean  Milman  thinks  to  hia  diahonor  ^ — in  hia  prolonged 
intervention  in  a  matter  apparently  bo  local  and  remote 
aa  the  election  of  an  archbiahop  of  York  in  England. 
The  history  of  the  case  waa  aubatantially  this:  after 
the  death  of  the  previous  archbishop,  a.  d.  1140,  Wil- 
liam, a  nephew  of  Stephen,  king  of  England,  was  elected 
to  the  office  by  one  party;  Henry  Mardach — honored  by 
Bernard,  to  whom  the  letter  advising  to  the  study  of 
rocks  and  woods  if  he  would  gain  wiadom  had  years 
before  been  addreased,  who  had  been  afterward  a  monk 
at  Clairvaux,  and  who  waa  now  abbot  of  Fountaina' 
abbey  —  waa  elected  by  the  other.*  It  aiq>ears  to  have 
been  fully  believed  by  Bernard,  whatever  the  absolute 
fact  may  have  been,  that  the  king's  nephew  had  been 
chosen  under  pressure,  and  by  aid  of  promised  royal 
favors ;  that  he  was  thus  improperly  elected,  and  was  in 
himself  unfit  for  the  place,  while  hia  competitor  waa  a 
man  of  learning,  piety,  and  general  capacity,  and  was 
the  prelate  properly  to  be  recognized.    He  wrote  in  thia 

1  HUt  of  Ut.  ChriBtUnity,  toL  !▼.  fyp.  247-248.  Hew  Toik  «d..  ISeL 
*  Anno  1140  oMlt  Thnntlniit,  arehiepuoopnt  EboraoenaiB.  Electb 
flaooeiacfrii  diaeordilnu  Totis  agitata  eat,  aliis  Willelmam  8tet»hani  legia 
nepotem,  Eboraoensis  EoclesuB  theflanrariam ;  aliia  Henricam  If  nrdaoh, 
abbatem  Fontanenaem,  B.  Beroaidi  qnondam  in  GLara^Valle  diadpiilaai, 
eligentilraa.  Willelmnm  Henricna  Wintoniensb  epiwopna  oonseerayit,  sed 
petentem  Roma  pallium  Papa  rejecit  Qoa  repalaa  rez  offensna,  Heniieom 
a  Pontifioe  oonflrmatnm,  et  pallio  donatum  reeipere  tenuit.  Quin  regia  ad 
ezemplom  oompoaiti  oivea  et  anbditi,  paatorem  non  admiaenmt.  Tuidem 
plaoato  rege  Henrieaa  a  ama  anaoeptoa  piaBfait  decem  annia,  mortaos  amio 
11S8  SberboniB.  —  Qparo,  toL  prim.»  od.  910  (nots). 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.  568 

sense  to  Pope  Innocent,  a.  d.  1141,  exhorting  the  pontiff 
to  treat  the  kinsman  of  the  king  as  Peter  had  treated 
him  who  thought  that  the  gifts  of  Ood  could  be  pur- 
chased with  money ;  ^  and  though  by  that  time  Innocent 
had  ceased  to  be  his  personal  friend,  the  pontifical  judg- 
ment agreed  with  his  own,  and  the  pallium,  the  symbol 
of  the  office  of  archbishop,  was  refused  to  the  royal  can- 
didate. Henry,  on  the  other  hand,  was  subsequently 
confirmed  in  his  election  by  the  pope,  and  received  the 
pallium.  By  this  the  king  was  highly  incensed,  and  the 
friends  of  William  were  sharply  excited,  —  were  indeed 
so  excited  that  the  Fountains'  abbey  was  a  few  years 
later  attacked  and  sacked  by  them.*  After  a  time,  how- 
ever, the  animosity  subsided,  or  was  felt  to  be  useless ; 
and  Henry  remained  in  the  archbishopric  until  his  deadly 
A.  D.  1153. 

During  the  years  in  which  the  matter  remained  in  dis- 
pute, not  being  finally  decided  at  Rome,  where  the  policy 
was  to  delay  as  long  as  possible  a  definitiye  settlement 
of  matters  like  these,  the  zeal  of  Bernard  against  the 
man  whom  he  thought  unworthy,  but  who  had  the  king 
of  England  behind  him,  never  flagged.  As  he  had  writ- 
ten to  Innocent,  who  was  then  repaying  with  cool  indif- 
ference or  distinct  animosity  the  enormous  service  which 

1  ArchiepiacopiiB  Eboneenns  Tenit  ad  "Wtm,  homo  qui  non  porait  D«iim 
•4intorem  snam,  ted  speravit  in  maltitadiiie  diyituunm  saanim.  Canaa 
qua  infinna  est,  et  langaida ;  et  aicat  Tironim  Teiiciam  attestatione  depre- 
hendimna,  a  planta  pedU  naque  ad  yertioeiii  non  est  aaaitaa  in  ea.  .  .  . 
Ecce  ille  Tenit  cam  mnltis,  qaoa  adetipalant  aibi,  et  predbna,  et  pretio. 
.  .  .  Quid  ergo  faeiet  Yicariua  Petri  in  negotio  isto,  niai  qnod  fecit 
Petras  cum  iUo,  qui  donom  Dei  aatiinaTit  peennia  poaiiderif  —  Opera, 
Tol.  prim.,  epiat.  ccczlvi.  coL  642. 

*  Henricua  abbaa  Fontanenaia  cum  aliia  earn  pertrazit  ad  Eageninm, 
a  quo  amotns  est  Willelmna.  EJjas  faatorea  Fontanenae  monasterium  diri- 
pvLBTunt.^^  Opera,  toL  prim.,  coll.  911  (nota). 


664  BnmABB  op  glaibtaux: 

the  abbot  had  rendered  him,  bo  he  wrote  afterward  to 
Celestine  Second  a  most  earnest  letter  about  the  matter, 
which  matter  he  wishes  might  pass  from  the  knowledge 
of  all,  and  be  buried  in  everlasting  silence.  The  failure 
to  put  William  with  peremptory  decree  out  of  the  office 
for  which  he  was  unfit,  is  to  him  a  very  triumph  of  the 
devil,  seen  to  be  so  in  all  tiie  world.^  When  Eugenius 
became  pope  he  wrote  to  him  letter  after  letter  on  the 
same  subject,'  instructing,  reproving,  exhorting,  not  al- 
ways perhaps  with  all  long-suffering,  but  with  a  fervor 
of  spirit  that  at  last  carried  the  day  and  secured  the  re- 
sult. Henry  died  within  a  year  of  his  own  decease ;  but 
before  death  he  had  been  finally  recognized  at  Borne  as 
the  true  archbishop.  One  may  doubt,  perhaps,  whether 
Bernard's  friendship  had  not  misled  him,  or  whether  he 
had  not  been  prejudiced  unduly  against  the  candidate 
of  the  king  by  his  jealousy  of  any  royal  intervention  in 
affairs  of  the  Church.  But  it  seems  impossible  not  to 
admire  the  steadfast  sincerity  of  his  spirit  and  speech, 
the  fearlessness  which  regarded  not  the  person  of  kings, 
the  broad  view  to  which  York,  in  the  distant  north  of 
England,  was  as  distinct,  and  almost  as  near  to  his 
Church-loving  heart,  as  was  Sens  or  Bheims.  He  had 
never  visited  England ;  but  all  Christian  Europe  was  to 
him  as  one  parish. 

1  0  ran  ignonntia  omniam  dignftm,  et  perpetao,  n  fitii  poewt^  nles- 
tio  comprimendam !  Veram  id  aero.  Hen !  notai  est  orM  triumpliiu 
diaboli.  TTbique  pertonat  pUusut  incircumnaoram  et  planctoa  bonontnit 
pro  eo  quod  videatur  sapientiam  Ticisse  malitia.  .  .  .  Pablioe  infamatnip 
ante  jadicem  accoaatni^  nee  poigatni,  imo  et  oonTietns,  et  aio  oonsecxmtaa 
eat.  —  Opera,  yol.  prim.,  epist.  cczxxy.  coL  494. 

*  Epist  cczzxTiiL,  where  he  again  aaya  of  William :  *'  Sed  apeimvit  in 
mnltitadine  diyitiarnm  anararo,  et  pnevalait  in  TaDitate  ana."  oezzxiz., 
cczl.,  cclii. :  "Si  adhuc  ateterit ;  proh  dolor !  verendnm,  ne  ipaioa  statna 
ait  veater  caaua;  dum  quidquid  adjecerit,  ntpote  mala  arbor,  qua  nan 
potest  niai  malos  fructua  facere,  non  ilU  jam,  aed  vobia  merito  impn* 
tetur."  — O>p0ra,  vol.  prim^  ooU.  602-506,  526. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.    666 

This  illustrates  the  breadth  of  his  interest  in  what 
concerned  the  affairs  of  the  Church.  The  intensity  of 
that  interest  is  exemplified,  perhaps  as  well  as  by  any- 
thing, by  the  part  which  he  took  in  a  matter  concerning 
the  bishop  of  Paris,  who  had  come  to  be  involved  in  a 
fierce  dispute  with  the  king  of  France,  Louis  Sixth.  In 
this  case  Bernard  had  only  reached  middle  life,  a.  d. 
1127,  and  the  great  fame  which  the  following  years  were 
swiftly  to  bring  him  was  yet  hidden  from  all.  This  was 
in  fact  the  firat  utterance  which  startled  Europe  with  the 
sense  of  his  extraordinary  power  of  command.  In  this 
case,  too,  he  was  not  fronting  the  fury  of  a  king  who 
lived  at  a  distance,  and  to  whom  he  owed  no  personal 
allegiance,  but  of  his  own  sovereign ;  and  his  words  were 
addressed,  not  to  pontiffs  whom  he  had  made  such,  and 
of  whom  men  said  that  he  himself  was  more  the  pope 
than  the  pontiff,  but  to  a  monarch  near  at  hand,  on 
whose  word  armies  waited,  and  whose  wrath  might  wipe 
out  the  abbey  of  Clairvaux  as  one  should  cut  up  roots 
with  a  mattock.  So  regarded,  his  action  and  words 
have  an  emphasis  on  them  which  he  himself  never  sur- 
passed. There  is  some  obscurity  about  the  origin  of  the 
trouble,  but  the  facts  as  Bernard  had  them  to  deal  with 
are  sufficiently  obvious. 

The  bishop  of  Paris  had  been  in  some  way  injured, 
as  he  conceived,  by  the  king ;  and  with  his  metropolitan, 
the  archbishop  of  Sens,  he  had  laid  the  monarch  under 
an  interdict,  and  fled  to  Giteaux,  to  seek  sympathy  and 
help  from  the  great  monastic  establishments.  It  might 
seem  that  Louis,  with  experienced  advisers  and  an  in- 
creasing military  power,  could  smile  disdainfully  at  any 
monastic  interference  with  his  plans;  and  at  first  he 
did  so.  But  the  letter  which  forthwith  went  from  Ber- 
nard, written  in  the  name  of  the  abbots  and  brothers 


566  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRYAUX  : 

of  the  Gistercian  afiSliation,  called  bim  to  halt,  in  a 
tone  which  startled  king  and  kingdom  by  its  impera- 
tive boldness.  ^^The  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,"  he 
said,  ^^  has  given  to  yon  a  kingdom  on  earth,  and  will 
give  you  one  in  heaven,  if  that  which  you  have  here 
received  you  study  to  administer  justly  and  wisely. 
This  is  what  we  wish  for  you,  this  what  we  pray  for 
you ;  that  here  in  fidelity,  and  there  in  felicity,  you  may 
reign.  But  by  what  counsel  is  it  that  you  now  sharply 
repulse  these  same  prayers  of  ours  for  you,  which  before, 
if  you  remember,  you  have  so  humbly  requested  ?  .  .  . 
These  things  we  have  taken  pains  to  intimate  to  you 
and  for  you,  boldly  indeed,  and  yet  with  affection ;  ad- 
monishing and  entreating  you,  by  our  reciprocal  friend- 
ship and  fraternity,  to  which  you  have  courteously  joined 
yourself,  but  which  you  are  now  grievously  wounding, 
that  you  speedily  desist  from  a  course  so  evil.  Other- 
wise, if  we  are  not  counted  worthy  to  be  heard,  but  are 
despised,  —  even  we,  your  brothers,  your  friends,  who 
daily  offer  prayers  for  you,  for  your  sons,  and  your  king- 
dom, —  you  may  know  that  our  weakness,  in  whatsoever 
things  it  hath  power,  will  not  be  wanting  to  the  Church 
of  Gk>d,  and  to  its  minister,  our  venerable  father  and 
friend  the  bishop  of  Paris,  who,  invoking  our  humility 
against  you,  has  sought  for  himself,  by  right  of  our 
brotherhood,  our  letters  to  the  Lord  Pope.  •  .  •  If  it 
may  please  you,  under  God's  inspiration,  to  incline  your 
ear  to  our  prayers,  and  according  to  our  counsel  and 
desire  to  reestablish  favor  with  the  bishop,  or  rather 
with  Gk>d,  we  are  ready,  on  account  of  this  thing,  to 
journey  to  you  wherever  it  may  please  you ;  but  if  not,  it 
is  necessary  for  us  to  listen  to  our  friend,  and  to  obey 
the  priest  of  God  !    Farewell."  ^ 

'  Open,  tdL  prim^  epigt  sir.  ooU.  190-191. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENGBili  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.    667 

Louis  could  not  be  careless  of  words  like  these,  and 
of  the  tone  of  spiritual  command  which  rang  throughout 
them,  and  he  had  almost  yielded  to  the  pressure  when 
the  pope  Honorius  Second  intervened,  and  raised  the 
interdict.  It  was  of  course  a  hard  blow  at  those  on 
whose  behalf,  and  in  whose  name,  Bernard  had  written ; 
and  the  pen  which  was  strong  as  a  battle-axe  and  sharper 
than  the  point  of  a  lance  turned  upon  the  pontiff,  as  I 
have  mentioned  in  a  previous  lecture,  with  a  scornful 
severity  which  does  not  yet  cease  to  surprise  us.  ^^  The 
honor  of  the  Church  wounded  by  Honorius"  was  his 
unflinching  retort  upon  the  ruler  of  Christendom.^  One 
does  not  see  how  a  sharper  or  more  contemptuous  re- 
buke could  have  been  put  into  words  so  few.  King  and 
pontiff,  to  his  sensitive,  fervent,  and  consecrated  soul, 
were  alike  to  be  honored  or  alike  to  be  rebuked  as  their 
feet  were  found,  or  were  not  found,  in  the  way  which 
to  him  appeared  the  way  of  justice  and  truth. 

Instances  like  these  illustrate  fairly  the  spirit  of  Ber- 
nard, —  trenchant,  not  truculent,  faithful,  free,  and  ut- 
terly bold,  while  also,  as  we  have  seen,  most  affectionate 
and  devout ;  and  in  their  time  they  affected,  not  the  con- 
vent of  Clairvaux  alone,  or  those  which  had  sprung  from 
it,  but  the  general  affairs  of  the  kingdom  and  of  Europe. 
But  there  is  still  one  part  of  his  action  to  be  brought 
into  view,  to  illustrate  another  side  of  his  character, 
with  the  power  which  he  exerted  whensoever  he  was 
moved  to  put  it  forth.  I  refer  to  that  championship  by 
him  of  the  order  of  Templars  which  lifted  it  out  of 
weakness  and  obscurity,  and  gave  it  the  prodigious  im- 
pulse in  Europe  out  of  which  came  its  astonishing 
development  in  that  age  and  the  following. 

All  orders  of  chivalry  must  have  had,  undoubtedly,  an 

^  Opeiv,  ToL  prim.,  epiit.  zItl  ooL  191* 


568  BERNARD   OF  CLAIBYAUZ  : 

attraction  for  Bernard,  so  long  as  their  proper  temper 
was  maintained.  Convent-walls  were,  indeed,  more  sa- 
cred to  him  than  feudal  keeps,  and  the  only  banners 
which  carried  with  them  his  full  enthusiasm  were  the 
Royal  banners  of  which  Yenantius  Fortunatus  had  long 
before  sung,  — 

«  Yexilla  regis  piodeunt, 
Fnlget  crucis  myBterium  ;  *' 

but  the  knightly  blood  was  as  vital  in  his  veins  as  if  he 
had  borne  his  father's  shield  on  stricken  fields,  and  the 
temper  of  daring,  endurance,  consecration  was  the  tena- 
per  which  lay  nearest  his  heart.  The  oath  with  which 
the  candidate  for  knighthood  was  set  apart  to  a  noble 
service;  the  white  tunic  which  he  took,  to  symbolize 
chastity ;  the  red  robe,  which  represented  the  blood 
that  he  must  be  ready  to  offer ;  the  black  coat,  which 
foreshadowed  the  death  which  awaited  him,  —  all  these 
were  beautiful  by  their  significance  to  the  spirit  of  Ber- 
nard; and  the  solemn  charge  to  be  loyal  and  valiant 
was  really  only  the  motto  of  his  life.  Human  nature 
was  often  hard  and  haughty,  as  it  has  not  wholly 
ceased  to  be  since ;  and  the  raiment  which  men  wore, 
of  silk  or  of  steel,  certainly  did  not  change  this  nature. 
Greed  and  license,  and  brutal  crime,  were  too  often  fa- 
miliar to  knights,  as  they  were  not  unknown  even  to 
monks ;  and  the  steel-headed  lance  may  have  sometimes 
made  more  ruthless  the  hand  which  held  it,  the  iron 
breastplate  have  hardened  the  heart  which  beat  behind. 
But  in  the  ideal  of  knighthood,  as  it  stood  before  Ber- 
nard, as  it  lives  still  on  fascinating  pages,  was  some- 
thing peculiarly  lofty  and  delicate,  humane  and  religions. 
Courtesy,  reverence,  gentleness,  courage,  veracity,  honor, 
respect  for  womanhood,  carelessness  of  death,  —  these  are 
qualities  of  a  cosmical  value ;  and  they  certainly  were 


IN  HIS  KELATION  TO  OENEBAL  EUBOPEAN  AFFAIRS.    569 

cherished,  rather  than  limited  or  enfeebled,  by  the  dis- 
cipline, the  oath,  and  the  exercise  of  knighthood.  Mr. 
Lecky  has  truly  said  that  <^  the  ideal  knight  of  the  Cru- 
sades and  of  Chivalry,  uniting  the  force  and  fire  of  the 
ancient  warrior  with  the  tenderness  and  humility  of  the 
Christian  saint,  •  •  .  though  it  was  rarely  or  never  per- 
fectly realized  in  life,  remained  the  type  and  model  of 
warlike  excellence,  to  which  many  generations  aspired ; 
and  its  softening  influence,"  he  justly  adds,  ^  may  even 
now  be  largely  traced  in  the  character  of  the  modem 
gentleman."  ^ 

It  was,  of  course,  as  natural  as  song  to  the  bird,  or 
the  murmur  of  leaves  under  the  breeze,  that  Bernard 
should  sympathize  with  every  true  knight.  But  the 
Templars,  in  his  view,  stood  apart  from  and  above 
other  military  orders,  as  at  once  pre-eminently  chival- 
ric  and  monastic.  Their  early,  and  for-  long  their  prin- 
cipal house,  was  in  the  Temple-enclosure  at  Jerusalem, 
whence  their  name,  and  whence  a  certain  penumbra  of 
sanctity  investing  their  order.  Their  special  purpose 
was  to  succor  pilgrims  on  the  way  to  Jerusalem ;  and 
their  oath  included  a  particular  promise  to  this  effect, 
in  addition  to  the  common  monastic  vows  of  poverty, 
chastity,  and  obedience.  As  monks,  they  belonged  to  the 
order  of  Saint  Augustine.  As  warriors,  their  accepted 
errand  on  earth  was  to  fence  with  lances  the  path  to  the 
places  which  the  Saviour  had  trodden,  that  tiie  feeblest 
might  safely  walk  therein.  Their  oath  bound  them  to 
go  beyond  sea  whenever  they  were  needed ;  never  to  fly, 
if  singly  attacked,  before  three  infidels ;  to  observe  per- 
petual chastity ;  to  assist  in  every  way  religious  persons, 
and  especially  the  Cistercians,  as  their  brothers  and 
friends :  ^^  So  might  Gk)d  help  them,  and  the  holy  Evan- 

1  Hist  of  Enropeui  If  orali,  toL  ii  p.  276.    New  Yoric  ed.,  1874. 


670  BERNARD  OF  CLAIBTAUX  : 

gelists!"  For  not  a  few  years  fhej  kept  their  oath; 
and  no  soldiers  were  feared  by  the  enemy  as  were  these, 
in  whom  it  was  said  that  the  gentleness  of  the  Iamb 
and  the  patience  of  the  hermit  were  combined  with  the 
strength  of  the  lion  and  the  boldness  of  the  hero.  Their 
standard,  named  Beauc^ant,  was  half  white  and  half 
black,  and  it  bore  the  motto,  ^^  Non  nobis,  Domine,  non 
nobis,  sed  nomini  tuo  da  gloriam." 

No  other  scheme  can  be  imagined  which  would  hare 
appealed  with  more  complete  power  to  the  spirit  of  Ber- 
nard. All  that  was  knightly  in  his  blood,  drawn  from 
a  race  of  fighting  ancestors,  all  that  was  poetic,  sympa- 
thetic, devout,  in  his  impassioned  and  animating  spirit, 
was  enlisted  at  once  for  the  maintenance  of  this  order, 
and  for  its  rapid  exaltation.  Ten  years  after  the  insti- 
tution of  the  order  it  still  numbered  less  than  a  score  of 
members ;  but  at  the  Council  of  Troyes,  a.  d.  1128,  at 
which  he  was  present,  a  vast  impulse  was  given  to  it, 
and  from  that  time  it  went  forward  to  such  strength 
and  fame  as  no  other  order  has  ever  attained.  Ber- 
nard's view  of  it,  in  its  early  aims,  was  eloquently  ex- 
pressed in  a  treatise  which  he  wrote  on  it,  after  some 
years  had  passed.^  His  exhortation  to  those  embraced 
in  it  is  as  characteristic  of  his  governing  temper  as  any 
one  thing  written  by  him.  As  to  soldiers  of  the  world 
he  says :  ^^  What  intolerable  madness  it  is  to  fight,  at 
vast  cost  and  labor,  for  no  other  wages  than  those  of 
death  and  of  sin!  You  deck  your  horses  with  silken 
trappings ;  you  put  on,  I  know  not  what  hanging  cloaks, 
over  your  corslets ;  you  paint  your  shields,  your  spears, 
your  saddles ;  you  ornament  bridles  and  spurs  with  gold, 
with  silver,  with  precious  stones;  and  in  such  pomp, 
with  disgraceful  rage  and  shameless  insensibility,  you 

i  Open,  Tol.  prim.,  De  Laade  Not»  Ifilitic,  eoU.  12W-78. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.  571 

rush  upon  death!  Are  these  the  insignia  of  soldiers, 
or  not  rather  unmanly  decorations  ?  .  .  .  Nor  does  any- 
thing move  you  to  battle  except  an  impulse  of  irrational 
wrath,  or  an  empty  thirst  for  glory,  or  the  greed  of 
earthly  gain!  Certainly,  for  reasons  like  these  it  is 
neither  safe  to  kill  nor  safe  to  fall.  But  the  soldiers 
of  Christ  fight  safely  the  battles  of  their  Lord,,  neither 
fearing  sin  in  the  killing  of  their  enemies,  nor  dreading 
danger  in  their  own  death;  since  death  for  Christ, 
whether  borne  or  inflicted,  has  nothing  of  crime  in  it, 
and  deserves  highest  glory.  The  soldier  of  Christ,  I 
say,  is  safe  when  he  kills,  yet  safer  when  he  dies. 
When  he  kills,  it  profits  Christ ;  when  he  dies,  it  profits 
himself.  For  not  without  cause  does  he  bear  the  sword. 
.  .  .  Yet,"  he  adds,  ^^even  the  Pagans  are  not  to  be 
killed  if  in  any  other  way  they  can  be  restrained  from 
their  hostility  and  oppression  toward  the  faithful."^ 

He  rejoices,  with  all  his  heart,  in  what  he  recognizes 
as  the  austere  discipline  of  these  soldiers  of  Christ ;  that 
in  their  food  and  clothing  is  nothing  superfluous,  but 
everything  for  need ;  that  they  live  in  communities,  with- 
out wives  or  children,  their  converse  being  glad  yet 
sober;  that  separate  properties  are  not  known  among 
them,  but  all  are  united  in  one  spirit ;  that  they  do  not 
sit  in  idleness,  or  wander  about  in  vague  curiosity,  but 
when  they  are  not  going  to  battle,  which  rarely  hap- 
pens, are  refitting  clothes  and  armor,  and  doing  what- 
ever is  needful  in  the  camp ;  that  the  haughty  word,  the 
useless  deed,  extravagant  laughter,  murmuring  and  whis- 
pering, are  unknown  among  them ;  that  dice  they  detest, 
and  in  hunting  or  hawking  find  no  pleasure ;  that  mimes 
and  story-tellers,  and  wanton  songs,  they  regard  with  ab- 
horrence ;  that  they  shave  their  heads,  are  never  gay  in 

^  Operty  vol.  prim.,  Ezhor.  ad  MiL  Temp.«  odU.  1256-67. 


572  BEBNABD  OF  CLAmYAUZ  : 

apparel,  rarely  washed,  shaggy  with  nntrimmed  beards, 
grimy  with  dust,  swarthy  with  armor  and  with  heat^ 
Such  were  soldiers  whom  Bernard  honored  with  a  loyal 
admiration.  The  splendid  processions  of  feudal  pomp 
were  grievous  in  his  sight.  The  brilliance  of  tourna- 
ments was  a  glittering  shame.  But  these  bronzed  war- 
riors, at  once  warriors  and  monks,  brave,  chaste,  and 
careless  of  death,  soldiers  of  Christ,  champions  of  the 
poor,  who  gave  their  life  under  Syrian  suns  to  keep  the 
way  open  to  the  city  of  the  Gross, — his  soul  drew  to 
them  with  sympathetic  affection,  and  all  the  vast  reach 
of  his  influence  in  Europe  was  given  to  their  cause. 

At  the  Council  of  Troyes,  as  I  have  said,  the  order 
was  formally  recognized  and  established,  to  be  soon  in- 
corporated under  a  rule  of  its  own,  with  special  privi- 
leges. The  impulse  then  given  it  went  on  with  only 
augmenting  force  in  after  years.  New  members  were 
rapidly  enrolled  in  the  order.  The  noblest  families  were 
glad  and  proud  to  have  in  it  representatives.  Immense 
gifts,  of  lands  and  of  money,  were  made  to  its  treasury. 
The  white  tunic  of  the  Templar,  with  the  red  cross  bla- 
zoned over  the  heart,  became  a  passport  to  universal 
honor.  No  soldiers  were  feared  as  they  were  in  the 
land  of  the  Saracen;  no  soldiers  were  honored  like 
them  in  Christian  countries.  They  had  their  own  gov- 
ernment, even  their  exclusive  religious  privilege,  so  that 
an  interdict  on  the  kingdom  left  their  services  undis- 
turbed. With  vast  possessions  in  many  lands,  with  un- 
equalled prowess  and  skill  in  arms,  with  enormous  power 
and  an  immense  fame,  they  remained  for  almost  two 
hundred  years  at  the  head  of  the  military  orders  of  Eu« 
rope,  till  their  own  license,  ambition,  greed,  with  a  fierce 
royal  jealousy,  combined  to  overthrow  them.    Those  who 

1  Open,  ToL  prim.,  Exhor.  ad  MIL  Temp.»  odIL  1S59-4MIL 


IN  HIS  BELATION  TO  OENEBAL  ETTBOPSAN  AFFAIRS.  678 

read  with  delight,  as  for  three  fourths  of  a  centarj  men 
have  been  reading,  the  prose-poem  of  Ivanhoe, — a  truer 
history  than  many  chronicles,  —  will  need  no  other  ac- 
count than  is  there  given  of  what  the  Templars  came 
to  be,  or  of  why  at  last  their  power  was  ended.  The 
splendid  meteor,  consumed  by  fierce  internal  combus- 
tion, fell  in  the  end,  a  noisome  pulp.  It  closed,  as  we 
know,  in  an  awful  catastrophe,  under  Clement  the  Fifth 
and  Philip  the  Fair.^  No  doubt  the  world  was  well  rid 
of  it  at  last;  but  no  one  who  follows  its  astonishing 
history  can  fail  to  feel  what  a  power  there  was  in  that 
hand  of  Bernard,  gentle  as  a  woman's,  stronger  than  of 
statesman,  which  contributed  so  largely  to  lift  the  order 
to  the  splendid  supremacy  of  a  century  and  three  quar- 

^  Le  Temple,  comme  tons  lee  oidres  militaires,  diriyait  de  Ctteanx.  Le 
T^foniiatear  de  Giteaux,  saint  Bernard,  de  la  m&ae  plume  qui  oommentait 
le  Gantique  des  cantiqaes,  donna  anz  chevalien  leor  r^le  enthooaiaate  et 
auatke.  Gette  i^gle,  c'^tait  Texil  et  la  gnerre  aainte  joaqa'k  la  mort.  .  •  • 
Us  n'ayaient  pas  de  repos  k  esptor.  On  ne  lenr  peimettait  pas  de  passer 
dans  des  oidres  moins  aostkes.  — Mighxlxt  :  Hist,  de  France,  torn,  iii 
p.  124. 

La  chate  est  gmve  aprto  les  grands  efforts.  L'ftme  mont^  si  hant  dans 
rh^roisme  et  la  saintet^  tombe  bien  loorde  en  terre.  Makde  et  aigrie, 
eUe  se  plonge  dans  le  mal  avec  one  faim  saarage,  comme  poar  se  yenger 
d*aToir  em.  TeUe  parait  ayoir  M  la  chnte  du  Temple.  Tout  ce  qn'il  7 
ayait  en  de  saint  en  roidre,  deyint  p^chi  et  sooillure.  Apr^  ayoir  tenda 
de  rhomme  k  Dien,  il  tonma  de  Dien  k  la  BSte.  Les  pienses  agapes,  les 
frat^mites  hiroiqnes,  couyrirent  de  sales  amours  de  moines.  lis  cach^rent 
rinfamie  en  s'y  mettant  plus  ayant  — Ibid,,  p.  182. 

Les  Templiers,  amends  le  dimanche  deyant  le  condle,  ayaient  M  jngds 
le  land! ;  les  uns,  qui  ayouaient,  mis  en  liberty ;  d'autres,  qui  ayaient 
totgours  nid,  emprisonnds  pour  la  yie;  ceux  qui  rdtractaient  leurs  ayeuz 
dddaris  relaps.  Ges  demiers,  au  nombre  de  dnquante-quatre,  furent  dd« 
grades  le  mdme  jour  par  I'dy^ue  de  Paris  et  Uyrds  an  bras  sdonlier.  Li 
roardi,  Us  furent  \jM6b  k  la  porta  Saint- Antoine.  Ges  maUieureuz  ayaiecit 
yarid  dans  les  prisons,  mais  ils  ne  yaritont  point  dans  les  flammes^  ils 
protest^rent  jusqu'au  bout  de  leur  innocence.  La  foule  dtait  muette  it 
comme  stnpide  d'dtonnement.  —Ibid,,  p.  180. 


574  BBBNAfiD  OF  CUJBYATJX: 

ters.  Perhaps  we  may  be  led  to  feel  that  if  his  ideal  of 
it  could  have  been  maintained,  in  the  downward-tending 
human  experience,  the  world  would  have  been  his  debtor 
for  it  in  all  time  to  come. 

Ladies,  and  (Gentlemen :  my  pleasant  task  comes  to 
its  end.  I  have  tried  to  set  Bernard  before  you  as  I 
had  come  years  since  to  see  him,  through  happy  studies 
of  his  writings  and  his  work.  If  in  any  measure  I  have 
succeeded,  the  remembrance  of  it  will  be  to  me  a  joy. 
I  have  carefully  sought  not  to  exalt  him  above  what  is 
meet,  and  not  to  fail  clearly  to  exhibit  what  may  seem 
to  us,  in  our  changed  times,  not  mistaken  only,  but  pos- 
sibly narrow,  passionate,  or  severe,  in  his  spirit  and 
woik.  I  seem  to  myself  to  recognize  fairly  his  limitar 
tions ;  and  he  would  have  been  the  last  man  in  the  world 
to  claim  to  be  without  stain  of  sin.  But  surely  we  must 
accept  him  as  quite  the  most  eminent  and  governing 
man  in  the  Europe  of  his  time ;  whose  temper  had  in  it 
a  remarkable  combination  of  sweetness  and  tenderness, 
with  practical  sagacity,  devout  consecration,  a  dauntless 
courage,  and  a  terrible  intensity;  whose  word  carried 
with  it  a  sovereign  stress  surpassing  that  of  any  other, 
whose  hand  most  effectively  moulded  history.  Ooncen- 
tration  of  force  was  no  more  among  his  characteristics 
than  was  the  broadest  range  of  attention.  He  moved 
with  his  entire  energy  upon  whatever  he  undertook,  yet 
all  the  public  development  of  Christendom  was  of  inter- 
est to  his  mind.  Naturally  a  devout  poetic  recluse,  he 
became  the  most  practical  master  of  affairs  appearing 
on  the  Continent.  As  a  primary  aim,  his  life  was  given 
to  the  monastic  discipline  and  duty,  with  the  multiplica- 
tion and  the  purification  of  the  monasteries,  nhich  to 
him  were  nurseries  of  religion,  schools  of  high  training, 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  OENfiBAL  EUBOPEAN  AFFAIRS.    575 

asylums  of  piety ;  and  he  left  at  his  death  a  hundred  and 
sixty  which  had  sprung  from  Clairvaux,  while  in  that 
single  abbey  were  its  seven  hundred  monks.  But  all 
the  while  he  was  equally  intent  on  making  the  entire 
Church  in  Europe  what  he  felt  that  it  should  be,  —  the 
living  witness  for  the  Master,  the  guide  to  the  erring, 
the  refuge  of  the  oppressed,  a  celestial  helper  to  all  dis- 
turbed but  faithful  souls ;  and  there  was  hardly  a  secu- 
lar movement  of  public  importance,  in  France  or  around 
it,  which  did  not  draw  his  earnest  attention,  on  which 
he  did  not  exert  an  influence,  always  powerful,  and 
surely  for  the  most  part  benign. 

Nothing  appeared  too  minute  for  his  regard,  as  noth- 
ing was  great  enough  to  fatigue  his  patience  or  to 
stagger  his  courage.  He  sent  forth  a  Crusade,  and 
superintended  the  affairs  of  his  convent,  with  equal 
readiness,  one  might  almost  say  with  equal  facility. 
He  put  a  pontiff  on  the  throne,  and  with  the  same 
voice  and  an  undisturbed  pulse  subdued  to  reason  a 
refractory  monk.  In  debates  of  synods,  and  in  king's 
councils,  his  voice  was  commanding,  and  prelates  and 
nobles  acknowledged  their  master;  yet  when  he  died 
the  weakest  had  lost  their  teacher  and  comforter,  and 
the  poorest  their  affectionate  companion.  Even  the 
grave  did  not  close  on  his  influence.  As  it  was  said  of 
the  Spanish  Cid,  who  died  when  Bernard  was  a  lad  of 
eight  years,  that  his  lifeless  body,  clothed  in  mail  and 
set  upon  his  horse,  carried  dismay  into  the  Moorish 
ranks  and  camps,  so  the  name  and  fame  of  the  great 
abbot  remained  an  inspiration,  a  defence,  and  a  warning, 
after  he  had  returned  to  the  dust  Even  in  our  day  the 
contest  has  been  sharp,  between  the  advocates  and  the 
opponents  of  a  recent  Roman  Catholic  dogma,  as  to  how  it 
is  related  to  Bernard's  judgment ;  and  the  time  will  not 


1 


676  BBBNiRD  OF  GLAXBTAUX: 

come  when  the  splendid  lessons  of  his  character  and 
career  will  cease  to  be  of  the  treasures  of  Christendom. 
To  me  he  stands,  I  gladly  confess,  among  the  real 
heroes  of  history.  Others  there  were,  in  his  own  cen- 
tury, of  finer  and  rarer  philosophical  gifts,  with  a  more 
acute  power  for  subtle  analysis,  a  more  discursbe 
range  of  thought,  perhaps  a  subtler  intuition  of  truth. 
Others  there  may  doubtless  have  been  of  an  equal  sin- 
cerity, and  an  equal  consecration.  The  men  who  came 
after  him  had,  of  course,  a  position  more  advanced,  an 
intellectual  equipment  more  complete,  by  reason,  in  part, 
of  their  inheritance  of  the  fruit  of  his  labors.  But  tak- 
ing him  all  in  all,  in  his  time,  he  seems  to  me  substan- 
tially unique.  It  is  certainly  not  easy  to  find  another 
combining  traits  at  once  so  engaging  and  so  majestic. 
It  is  not  easy  to  find  another  whose  work,  on  the  whole, 
was  more  remarkable,  or  more  deserving  of  our  remem- 
brance. Others  raised  ripples,  shining  and  wide;  he 
lifted  tides.  Others  rode  proudly  on  popular  currents, 
which  he  with  a  profounder  energy  stirred  or  stemmed. 
It  is  not  without  forethought  that  I  have  associated  his 
name  with  the  more  famous  and  dominating  names  of 
Charlemagne  and  Hildebrand.  What  they  did  govern- 
mentally  for  Europe,  that  he  did  morally,  more  fully 
than  any  other ;  assisting  by  character,  by  inspirations  of 
noble  thought  and  superlative  example,  to  the  develop- 
ment of  that  moral  unity  among  the  peoples  of  the  Con- 
tinent without  which  governmental  unity,  in  Church  or 
in  State,  must  have  remained  superficial  and  transient 
Charlemagne  towered  over  the  Europe  of  his  time,  colos- 
sal, magnificent,  with  civil  wisdom  and  military  power 
both  of  which  were  wholly  unmatched,  with  vast  archi- 
tectural plans  for  society,  and  with  a  genius  for  command 
to  which  his  throne  gave  an  equal  opportunity.    Hilde- 


IN  HIS  BELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUBOPEAN  AFFAIB8.    577 

brand — greatest,  as  I  think,  in  the  series  of  the  popes 
— was  equally  supreme  in  the  Europe  of  his  day,  and 
from  the  pontifical  chair  at  Rome  guided  and  governed 
princes  and  peoples  who  believed  him  to  hold  the  keys 
of  Heaven.  But  here  was  a  man,  with  no  station  to  give 
him  prominence,  only  one  of  the  many  thousands  of 
abbots,  without  army  or  treasury,  without  crown  or 
tiara,  who  by  spirit,  by  genius,  by  fervent  purpose  ex- 
pressed in  the  eloquence  of  deeds  as  of  words,  and  by  an 
almost  magical  control  over  men>  exerted  an  influence 
hardly  less  conspicuous,  in  some  respects  more  wide  and 
vital,  than  that  of  either  emperor  or  pope.  His  was  an 
office  surpassing  while  completing  theirs, — to  compact 
Europe  through  a  pervasive  spiritual  life;  to  make  it 
one,  not  by  encircling  clamps  of  armies,  not  by  com- 
manding hierarchical  decrees,  but  by  exalting  before  it 
a  character,  an  aim,  a  spiritual  experience,  most  signal 
in  himself,  but  attracting  admiration,  and  inciting  aspi- 
ration, from  all  on  whom  fell  the  lustre  of  his  name. 
He  can  hardly  have  been  conscious  of  the  full  greatness 
of  his  own  mission.  In  his  humility  he  would  have 
shrunk  from  an  office  so  august.  But  his  was  a  power, 
of  instruction  and  stimulation,  largely  forming  his  age, 
and  vastly  outlasting  it;  while  his  pre-eminence  is  nobler 
and  more  significant  through  his  want  of  either  arma- 
ment or  rank. 

English  writers  appear  for  the  most  part,  in  their 
occasional  references  to  him,  to  have  done  him  scant 
justice.  Their  differences  from  him  have  been  too 
often  elemental;  not  of  opinion  only,  or  of  Church 
association,  but  of  temperament,  bent  of  mind,  inherited 
life-force.  Perhaps  our  hurrying,  noisy  times,  are  all 
too  distant,  in  time  and  in  tone,  to  allow  us  to  take  full 
impression  from  him.     But  I  think  of  him  in  his  physi- 

87 


578  BEBNABD  OF  GLAIBYAUX  : 

cal  weaknesa,  raising  armies,  subduing  nobles,  curbing 
kings,  directing  the  Church,  and  he  represents  the  invin* 
cible  mind  which  more  and  more  was  to  govern  and 
pervade  the  whole  frame  of  society.  I  think  of  him  in 
his  personal  spirit,  contemplative,  devout,  intensely  prac- 
tical, jet  marvellously  lofty,  self-sacrificing,  sincere,  and 
passionately  devoted  to  what  he  esteemed  the  noblest 
ends,  and  he  represents  the  consecrated  heart,  humble, 
intrepid,  and  near  to  the  Master's,  from  which  civiliza- 
tion must  always  take  its  finest  and  divinest  force.  I 
summon  before  me  his  whole  inspiring  and  delicate  per- 
sonality, with  the  pathos  and  the  power  which  it  equally 
infolded,  and  I  see  how  invisible  spiritual  energies  had 
been  at  work  in  preceding  ages,  even  in  the  darkest,  to 
find  at  last  their  issue  in  him,  as  the  geyser  leaps  with 
flashing  heat  into  the  dark  and  icy  air,  from  the  pressure 
of  many  streams  behind.  And  when  I  see  what  an  influ- 
ence he  exerted  from  a  modest  cell,  in  a  narrow  ravine, 
— not  from  any  cathedral  throne,  not  even  from  any 
university  chair, — the  contrast  between  the  tentii  cen- 
tury and  his  becomes  almost  astonishing.  Surely  we 
have  traced  an  enormous  progress!  Hildebrand  and 
Urban  had  been  greater  benefactors  of  the  world  than 
they  knew«  since  this  frail  figure,  with  hardly  a  continu- 
ing foothold  on  the  planet,  could  rise  to  such  sovereigniy 
over  the  Europe  which  they  had  in  a  measure  trained. 

Nor  does  it  surprise  us,  when  we  see  what  he  waa  and 
what  was  the  effect  of  his  spirit  and  work,  that  the  follow- 
ing ages  should  show  an  advancement,  not  swift  but  sure, 
silent  but  wide ;  that  universities  were  established,  to 
become  the  centres  of  expanding  intelligence ;  that  the 
splendid  work  of  cathedral-building  went  on  with  a  su- 
perb rapidity ;  that  the  labors  of  the  schoolmen  were 
more  ample  and  searching,  and  pointed  ever  toward 


i 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.    579 

richer  results ;  that  the  voice  of  Christian  song  broke 
forth  in  sweeter  and  in  grander  strains. 

One  does  not  wonder  that  after  a  time  such  a  king  as 
Louis  Ninth  came  to  be  possible,  the  splendid  knight, 
the  liberal  sovereign,  the  devout  and  saintly  believer; 
that  even  agriculture  prospered,  population  was  multi- 
plied, wealth  was  increased,  liberties  were  expanded,  in 
the  new  atmosphere ;  that  the  power  of  the  commons 
was  gradually  lifted,  with  the  privileges  of  boroughs  and 
cities ;  and  that,  in  spite  of  all  the  corruption  with  which 
the  religious  system  of  Europe  came  to  be  infected  — 
partly,  at  least,  through  the  forty  years'  schism  —  the 
vital  forces  revealed  in  the  spiritual  life  of  Bernard 
flowed  on  and  widened,  till  at  last  the  great  enfranchise- 
ment of  mind  in  the  sixteenth  century  broke  into  exhi- 
bition with  irresistible  force. 

I  trust  that  it  may  be  for  the  profit  of  all  of  us  that 
we  have  so  long  allowed  our  minds  to  be  occupied  at 
intervals  with  the  thought  of  this  man.  I  would  even 
hope  that  the  age  in  which  he  lived  may  have  taken 
before  us  a  clearer  outline,  and  have  shown  us  what  was 
best  in  its  temper.  I  surely  hope  that  any  attentive  and 
thoughtful  spirits  which  have  here  looked  upon  him  may 
take  from  him  some  nobler  impulse.  If  ever  we  are 
tempted  to  an  indolent  self-indulgence,  his  readiness  for 
every  high  service  should  rebuke  us.  If  we  ever  grow 
faint  before  unrighteous  assault,  his  dauntless  and  hero- 
ical  spirit  should  shame  our  weakness,  and  bear  us  up 
into  unfailing  courage.  If  the  Gospel  should  threaten 
to  lose  for  us  any  part  of  its  glory,  seeming  likely  to  be 
dimmed  by  speculative  philosophies  or  possibly  discred- 
ited by  physical  research,  it  cannot  but  be  well  for  us  to 
remember  what  sources  of  highest  life  he  fouud  in  it, 
and  to  let  his  assurance  of  the  Divine  Message  which 


580  BBBNABD  OF  CLAIBYAUX  : 

came  by  Chriat  open  to  us  its  light  and  height  If  the 
world  should  erer  appear  to  us  too  selfish  and  gross  to 
allow  realization  to  the  supreme  hope  of  a  Divine  King- 
dom universal  upon  it,  let  us  remember  how  it  lay  before 
him,  in  the  wild  furies  of  oppression  and  passion,  with 
ibe  shadow  of  darkened  ages  upon  it,  and  let  his  in- 
flexible and  vehement  assurance  of  the  victory  of  the 
Lord  be  to  us  a  reproof  and  a  cure.  For  one,  I  recog- 
nize no  separation  from  him  because  he  was  in  the 
Soman  Church,  as  my  ancestors  then  were,  but  as  I  am 
not.  The  Church  in  which  such  a  man  was  produced, 
and  on  which  his  power  was  majestically  exerted,  must 
always  take  an  honor  from  him.  But  it  is  his  personal 
quality  which  makes  him  reverend  and  dear  to  our 
thought,  not  his  connection  with  the  Church  which  he 
loved  but  which  he  reproved ;  and  the  splendor  of  his 
spirit  overshines  party  walls.  Personally  I  know  that  I 
owe  him  much, —  for  uplift  from  depression,  for  tranquil- 
izing  influence  in  times  of  disturbance,  for  encourage- 
ment to  duty  when  it  seemed  unattractive,  for  tiiie  fine 
inspirations  of  spiritual  thought.  He  has  been  to  me  a 
frequent  minister  of  noblest  impulse ;  and  it  has  been 
simply  a  labor  of  love  to  present  these  rapid  sketches 
of  him. 

The  eulogies  pronounced  on  him  in  his  own  Church 
have  been  earnest  and  abundant,  and  they  continue  to 
our  time.  But  there  are  some  words  of  James  Martinean, 
not  written  with  reference  to  him,  which  one  may  prop- 
erly remember  in  considering  a  character  and  a  woric 
like  his.  ^^  We  deceive  ourselves,"  Martineau  says,  ^'  if 
in  our  higher  life  we  forget  our  ancestry,  and  profess  to 
be  autochthones  •  •  •  For  myself,  both  conviction  and 
feeling  keep  me  close  to  the  poetry  and  the  piety  of 
Christendom.    It  is  my  native  air,  and  in  no  other  can 


IN  HIB  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN  AFFAIRS.    581 

I  breathe ;  and  wherever  it  passes  it  so  mellows  the  soil, 
and  feeds  the  roots  of  character,  and  nurtures  such 
grace  and  balance  of  affection,  that  for  anj  climate  sim- 
ilarly rich  in  elements  of  perfect  life  I  look  in  yain  else- 
where." ^  It  is  the  poetry  and  the  piety  of  Christendom 
in  the  Middle  Age,  as  well  as  its  energy,  its  sovereign 
purpose,  perhaps  in  some  measure  its  mistakes,  which 
Bernard  represents.  In  all  the  glow  of  practical  enter- 
prise, and  all  the  haste  of  incessant  activity,  we  cannot 
but  see  that  out  of  retired  and  high  contemplation,  from 
a  prayerfulness  so  habitual  that  it  hardly  needed  expres- 
sion in  words,  from  a  sympathy  with  the  Master  as  keen 
as  that  of  John  or  of  Paul,  from  the  expectation  of  at- 
taining through  Him  a  victorious  purity,  and  the  Vision 
of  Ood,  —  from  these  came  the  power,  the  achievement, 
and  the  fame  which  make  him  illustrious.  Tou  remem- 
ber how  Dante  saw  him  in  Paradise :  — * 

*•  I  tikongfat  I  dkould  see  Beatrioe,  «kd  saw 
An  old  man,  habitod  like  the  glorioot  people  ; 
O'erflowing  was  he  in  his  eyes  and  cheeks 
With  joy  benign,  in  attitade  of  pity. 
As  to  a  tender  fitther  is  becoming. 

Ai  he  who  peradTentare  from  Croatia 
Cometh  to  geze  at  our  Veronica  — 
Sren  snch  was  I  while  gazing  at  tike  liTlng 
Charity  of  the  man,  who  in  this  world 
By  contemplation  tasted  of  that  peace."  * 

So  Stood  Bernard  before  the  grand  and  sad  Italian, 
when  seen  a  century  and  a  half  after  his  death,  in  the 
tenth  sphere,  amid  the  snow-white  rose  which  opened  its 
concentric  leaves  —  faces  of  flame,  and  wings  of  gold  — 
beneath  the  efBuence  of  the  Eternal  Sun ;  the  exemplar  of 

1  Profaoe  to  "  Hymns  of  Praise  and  Ptayer." 
>  Psxadiso,  xxsL  67-68,  94-lia 


582  BERNARD  OF  CLAIRTAUX  : 

contemplationy  the  surpassing  model  of  a  devout  charity, 
the  guide  of  those  who  with  disciplined  sight  would 
mount  along  the  rays  of  Heaven.  Such  had  he  been 
when  working  on  earth,  with  a  force  so  tireless,  in  a 
body  so  feeble.  So  the  records  of  history  set  him  before 
us.  The  spiritual  sublimed  the  natural  in  him.  Celes- 
tial forces  broke  through  his  life  into  the  dark  secular 
spheres.  From  worlds  on  high  came  the  supplies  of  his 
amazing  and  invincible  energy.  In  times  of  tumult  and 
of  peril  he  followed  those  of  the  earlier  day  ^'who, 
through  faith,  subdued  kingdoms,  wrought  righteousness, 
obtained  promises,  stopped  the  mouths  of  lions,  out  of 
weakness  were  made  strong,  waxed  valiant  in  fight, 
turned  to  flight  the  armies  of  the  aliens."  One  does 
not  know  where  else  to  look  for  a  more  lofty  and 
shining  exhibition  of  the  power  of  Faith  as  a  subjective 
spiritual  force,  and  of  the  enthusiasm  which  it  inspires. 
Here  was  the  source  of  whatever  was  most  majestic  in 
his  astonishing  character  and  career.  This  linked  his 
frail  and  lowly  life  with  Continental  trends  and  triumphs. 
This  made  his  rapid  and  crowded  years  the  source  of  an 
influence  which  never  has  ceased,  while  to  himself  the 
path  to  higher  realms  of  service.  Because  of  it,  he  led  the 
peoples,  awed  the  prelates,  conquered  kings.  Because 
of  it,  he  ascended  at  last  from  the  bright  valley  which  he 
had  fashioned  into  a  home  of  piety  and  peace  to  the 
mountains  of  Ood,  —  going  happily,  as  one  of  his  biog- 
raphers said,  '^  from  the  body  of  death  on  earth  to  the 
land  of  the  living,  from  the  sobbing  lament  of  his 
disciples  to  the  joyful  assemblies,  to  the  welcoming  co- 
horts of  saints,  to  the  armies  of  angels,  to  the  glory 
of  Christ."  ^  I  think  of  him  planning,  toiling,  stmggling 
to  the  last,  in  the  impulse  of  faith,  for  what  he  con- 

1  Open,  Tol.  MO.,  Vita,  L  UK  ▼.  col.  2S59. 


IN  HIS  RELATION  TO  GENERAL  EUROPEAN   AFFAIRS.    588 

ceived  the  service  of  God,  and  I  know  of  no  other 
who  could  better  have  adopted,  if  he  had  chosen,  the 
words  of  the  hymn  of  the  other  Bernard,  the  monk  of 
Clugni : — 

'*  And  now  we  fight  the  battle,  bat  then  shall  wear  the  crown 
Of  full  and  everlasting  and  passionless  renown  ; 
For  now  we  watch  and  struggle,  and  now  we  live  by  hope, 
And  Zion  in  her  anguish  with  Babylon  must  cope ; 
But  He  whom  now  we  trust  in  shall  then  be  seen  and  known* 
And  they  who  know  and  see  Him  shall  have  Him  for  their  own  1 " 


INDEX. 


ABixARD,  hb  mental  qualities,  127;  liii 
nuents,  430  ^  the  name,  43Q ;  nis  love 
for  his  studies,  431 ;  compared  with 
Pebgiiis  and  Descartes,  43s ;  not  in- 
fluenced by  the  enthusiasm  of  tlie  Cru- 
sades, 432;  under  the  influence  of 
Roscellinus,  434 ;  at  Paris,  435 ;  pos- 
sessed a  genius  tor  argumentatioo.  437 ; 
in  collision  with  Vmam  of  Cham- 
peaux,  438,  439;  establishes  a  school 


at  Melnn  and  at  Corbeil,  438 ;  teaches 
at  Paris,  440 ;  studies  theology  and  lec- 
tures on  fizeldel,  441 ;  a  canon  in  the 
Churdi,  443;  ms  fame  as  a  teacher, 
443;  compared  with  Bernard,  4x4  £t 
Mf.;  seduces  H6k>Ise^  448;  his  tame 
thenceforward  on  the  wan^  448;  his 


"  Introduction    to    Theology,'*    450 
condemned  as^  a      '  "' 
controveny  with 


Sabellian,  451; 
the   monks  of 


St. 


Denis,  45s ;  flees  to  Champagne,  452 ; 
builds  the  oratory  of  **  The  Puadete,** 
453 ;  fint  meeting  with  Bernard,  454, 
459 ;  becomes  morbid,  455 ;  abbot  of 
St.  Gfldas,  456;  writes  the  History  of 
hb  Calamities,  457 ;  correspondence  of, 
with  H61oIse,  ^58;  his  writings,  45^; 
opens  a  school  on  Mount  St.  '^ 


▼>^^  459f  writes  an  ironical  letter  to 
Bemarcl,  459;  antagonism  between, 
and  Bernard,  460  st  ua,,  462 ;  called 
the  father  of  modem  rationalism,  464-, 
compared  with  Voltaire,  464 ;  his  idea 
of  Faith,  464:  Aristotle  quoted  by, 
465;  as  to  the  Fathers,  466, 469;  as  to 
the  morality  of  the  Gospels,  467;  ex- 
alted the  heathen  philosophers  above 
the  Church  Fathen,  467  4(  seq,;  his 
*<  Sic  et  Non,"  469 ;  Bernard's  opinion 
of  his  yiews,  469;  his  theory  of  the 
Atonement,  315 ;  not  an  adherent  of 
Attgustin^  475;  honored  Aristotle, 
4jr5  ;  his  docmne,  Conceptualism,  476; 
his  free-thinkine  in  matters  of  the  Faith, 
as  characterized  by  Michelet,  477 ;  the 
kachingof  his  <<  Sdto  tdpsum,"  478 ; 


his  treatment  of  the  doctrine  of  Origi- 
nal Sin,  470 ;  of  the  Atonement,  480 ; 
of  the  Trmity,  481  tt  ssq, ;  imitated  by 
hisdisdple8.484;  wide  diffusion  of  his 
teachings,  484  £t  ssq, ;  thought  b^  Ber- 
nard to  hcud  more  extreme  opinions 
tlian  those  he  announced,  486;  his 
theological  teachings,  brought  to  Ber- 
nard's notiosi  489;  has  an  interriew 
with  him,  490^  claims  the  privilege  of 
▼indicating  his  opinions  oefore  the 
Council  di  Sens,  491 ;  protests,  and 
appeab  to  the  pope,  491 ;  \Aa  wntings 
condemned,  493 ;  his  rat  lual  to  answer 
his  opponente,  inexplicable,  494;  a 
broken  man,  496;  condemned  by  the 
p«>pe,  496;  Peter  the  Venerable  re- 
ceives him  at  Clugni,  and  intercedes 
with  the  pope  for  him,  497;  obtains 
permission  to  remain  at  Clugni,  498 ; 
nis  hat  years,  499;  hvmiis  of.  500.  and 
note;  at  St.  Marcel,  500;  his  death 
and  burial,  501 ;  Cousfai's  judgment 
concerning,  502 ;  compared  with  Des- 
caiteL  502;  Remusat's  estimate  0^ 
503 ;  his  History  of  his  Calamitif,  503; 
seniaid's  power  over,  521. 

Agnbs,  mother  of  Henry  Fourth,  140. 

Agriculturs  practised  and  tanght  by 
the  monks,  257. 

AiDAN,  263. 

Albbrtus  Magnus,  255. 

Alcuin  brou^t  \n  Charlemafne  from 
England,  29 ;  and  the  dassicau  writers. 
244;  urged  upon  the  clergy  the  duty  01 
preadiing,  362  ti  stq* 

Aletta,  tiie  mother  of  Bernard,  139; 
her  ancestry,  148;  her  children,  149; 
her  monastic  mode  of  life,  149:  ina- 
dents  of  her  death,  150;  bnriea  In  the 
convent  of  St.  Boaignitt.  151 ;  her  in- 
fluence upon  Bernard's  life,  151, 20a; 
her  son's  vision  of  her,  154. 

Alxxamdrr  Second,  80.  .  '^' 


586 


INDEX. 


Albzaxdbk  Fifth,  elected  pope,  542. 

Albzamdbr,  Dr.  Tames,  his  tnnshitioD 
of  one  of  Bemara's  hymns,  420. 

Alprkd,  the  Gxeat,  translated  Gregory's 
**  Rule  for  Pastors  "  into  A.  S.,  361. 

Almaric,  287. 

Ambrose  of  Milan,  as  a  preacher,  358. 

Anaclbtus  Second,  his  birth  and  early 
career,  533;  elected  pope,  533;  his 
power  greater  than  that  of  Innocent, 
52^;  supported  by  Roger  of  Sidly, 
536;  excommunicated  by  the  Coundl 
at  Pisa,  537 ;  his  death,  540. 

Andrbw.  the  brother  of  Bernard,  sees 
his  mother  in  a  vision,  154. 

Angbuqub,  M^re,  a  saying  of,  326. 

'*  Angblus,*'  tfaev  130. 

Angilbbrt,  39. 

Anschar,  263. 

Ansblm.  hb  career,  116;  archbishop  of 
Canterbuiy,  ii^r;  a  profound  thinker* 
118;  Dante's  viidon  of,  no:  spiritual 
insight  of,  238,  240;  charities  of  his 
oonyent,  200 ;  attachment  of,  to  Osbem, 
^5t  '93;  me  first  of  the  schooknen, 
296;  his  conception  of  the  relation  be- 
tween understanding  and  believing,  103; 
his  hatred  of  sin,  312 ;  his  theory  ofthe 
Atonement,  314 ;  nis  conception  of  jus- 
tification, 319. 

Ansblic  of  Laon,  441. 

Ansblm,  bishop  of  Milan,  snpports  Anar 
detus,  536. 

Anthony,  Saint,  211. 

Apparitions  recorded  as  seen  at  the  end 
of  the  tenth  century,  62, 63. 

Aquinas,  Thomas,  tribute  of,  to  Ber^ 
n«d»  I3ta94« 

Aquitainb,  William  of,  cowed  by  Ber- 
nard, 167  tt  seg. 

Arc,  Jeanne  d',  her  career  an  Instance  of 
the  supremacy  of  moral  power,  510. 

Aristotlb  quoted  by  Ab^lard,  465 :  his 
modification  of  the  doctrine  of  realism, 
473»  475« 

Arnauld  of  Brescia,  attacks  the  papal 
system,  486. 

Arnold,  Dr.,  his  estimate  of  the  im- 
portance of  the  Victory  of  Tours,  22 
Mate, 

AssuRANCB  of  faith,  312. 

Atbanasius  introduces  the  Cenobite 
system  into  Italy,  212. 

Atonbmbnt,  the^  Bernard's  theory  of, 


313 ;  Ansdm*8  theory  of,  314 :  Ab£Iaid 
the  champion  of  the  ^^inoral  tfaeocy" 

AfJGUSTiNB,  his  vision  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  on  earth,  8,  245 ;  himsSf 
a  great  preacher,  brought  to  Christ 
through  the  preaching  of  Ambrose,  358; 
Confessions  of,  457 ;  a  realist,  472,  475. 

"AvB  Maria,"  the,  130. 

Bacon,  Roger,  his  great  aoquiiemente, 
256. 

Baptism,  efficacy  of,  in  Beniaid's  view, 
310,  333. 

Basil,  the  Great,  245 ;  asa preacher,  358. 

Baronius,  tribute  of,  to  Benard,  14; 
annals  of,  quoted,  57,  84, 91 ;  Ins  eu- 
logy of  Bernard,  200. 

Bbatricb,  Countess,  letters  of  HUde. 
brand  to,  93 ;  the  mother  of  Coontess 
Matilda,  140. 

Bbdb,  the  Venerable^  his  inddiledness  to 
monastic  manuscnpts,  246;  his  vast 
acquisitions,  252. 

Bbnbdict  Ninth,  Pope,  infamy  of,  50; 
popular  legends  oonoeriiing,  79. 

Bbnbdict,  the  rule  of,  instituted  at 
Monte  Cassino,  212;  hb  coDvcntnal 
rules  of  life,  229. 

Bbnbdictis,  James  de,  hymn  of,  343,4x9^ 

Bbnignus,  Abbey  of  St,  lao. 

Bbrbngarius  of  Toms,  opposes  the 
doctrine  of  the  Real  Presence,  119  $  his 
bdd  heretical  *''^b}*!g  on  the  sobiect 
289.  '^ 

Bbrbnoarius,  father  of  Abflard,  430; 
enters  a  monastery,  440. 

Bernard  the  gian<tfather  of  Bernard  of 
Clairvaux,  134. 

Bbrnard,  Abbot  of  Clairvaux.  the  in- 
terest of  the  study  of  hislife,  12; 
canonized  by  Alexander  Third,  13; 
tributes  of  honor  to,  13  gt  seg;  ins 
message  to  us,  16,  17-,  need  of  under- 
standing his  time  to  know  him,  18; 
date  ^  of  hb  birtii,  19 ;  fortunate  in 
hb  time^  71 ;  the  environment  of  hb 
life,  127, 134  «rM^.;  hb  birth,  134;  hb 
fadier,  137 ;  his  mother,  139 ;  defeated 
by  her  to  the  service  of  Chnst,  150;  hb 
career^  determined  by  her  prayen,  151 ; 

dinertBl 


hb  life  at  sdiool,  152;  the 

careers  open  to  him,  152;  turns  to 
monastic  life^  1^3;  has  a  vision  of  hb 
mother,  154;  his  spiritual  InherituMe 
from  his  parents,  154;  hb  physical 
characteristics,    155;    hb  InhcrhsDM 


IMDIX 


687 


from  his  mother,  155, 163;  his  enioy- 
ment  of  nature,  156^  seq. ;  the  tender- 
ness and  fervor  of  nis  nature,  i  ^8  ^  seq, ; 
hu  grief  at  his  brother  Gerara's  death, 
160 ;  record  of  his  conversion,  163  ; 
prendls  upon  his  brothers  to  lead  a 
rdiffious  lite,  164,  J17 ;  his  enthusiasm 
anacottnge,  165  ^  his  power  to  cow  the 
Duke  of  Aquitaine,  16S,  169 :  liis  in- 
tensity, 170 :  rebukes  Louis  Seventh, 
i;o;  his  address  to  Henry  of  Nor- 
mandy, 172 ;  sliarply  remonstrates  widi 
Innocent  Second,  17^;  with  Eugenius 
Third,  174  ti  teg, ;  his  appeal  in  favor 
of  the  Jews,  179;  faces  Rudolph  and 
saves  tne  Jews,  180:  his  charity  to 
heretical  sects,  181 ;  his  personal  ten- 
dency devout  rather  than  scholastic, 
18a;  the  sufferings  of  Christ  his  fa- 
vorite subject  of  ecstatic  meditation, 
183  «/  stq, ;  not  indined  to  the  worship 
of  the  samts,  188 ;  his  visions,  154, 189 
4t  sgf.;  his  practical  traits,  190,  19a; 
almost  an  iconodast,  190^  191 ;  an  in- 
valid all  his  life,  193 ;  his  food,  1^3 ; 
impresses  the  monastery  with  his  spirit, 
194;  believed  to  be  attended  by  the 
Inrgin,  i^ ;  would  not  accept  ecclesi- 
astical office,  19c ;  occasionally  irritable^ 
196;  considered  inspired,  196 ;  believed 
to  be  able  to  work  mirades,  107 ;  testi- 
mony to  this  power,  199 ;  his  nnmility, 
aoo  j  testimony  to  nis  character,  aoo ; 
am^p  to  depart,  aoi ;  death  01,  aoa ; 
4niies  for  acnnission  to  the  convent  at 
Citeaux,  219,  230;  austerity  of  his  con- 
vent life, '221 ;  sete  out  toiQ|i&d ^  nc'v 
monastery,  223;  hardship  encoun- 
tered by,  225,  226;  h!^  faith  and  its 
reward,  237;  /tonsecrated  abbot  of 
Clairvanx,  228r;  his  life  saved  by  W3- 
liam  of  Champianx,  228 :  rebukes  the 
laxity  of  the  monastic  rules  at  Clugni, 
230  «/  sgg,;  indulgence  of,  to  the  sick 
and  aged,  233 ;  directs  the  charities  of 
hb  convent,  258 ;  rescues  a  criminal, 
961 ;  his  love  for  his  abbey,  268 ;  ex- 
emplified the  best  qualities  of  a  monk, 
271 ;  his  literary  labors, ^73 ;  his  mani- 
fold occupations,  27^^  his  love  for  the 
monastic  life,  274 ;  (us  fai||^75 :  the 
diaiacter  of  his  genius^  294;  left  no 
body  of  theolodcaidoctrme,  295 ;  ''Uie 
last  of  tiie  Facers.*'  296 ;  a  firm  super- 
natuialist,  297;  his  regard  for  the 
Scriptures,  298;  and  for  the  Church 
Fathers,  299 ;  his  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  300 ;  the  tlireef old  meanings  in 
the  text  of  Scripture  recognized  by  him, 
301 ;  his  conception  of  the  rdations  of 
foason  and  faitti,  303;  the  three  states 


of  the  miad  (fistingiiishedfaThim  in  the 
attainment  of  truth,  304 ;  nis  spiritual 
contact  with  the  Divine  Spirit:  to6:  the 
paiticuhr  doctrines  accepted  by  nim, 
307  st  seq, :  a  realist,  308;  not  given  to 
psychokwical  analysis,  308 ;  his  estimate 
of  the  efficacy  of  the  sacraments,  310 : 
his  bdief  in  the  twofold  nature  of 
Christ,  313 ;  his  theory  of  the  Atone- 
ment, ^13,  316 ;  his  cooo»tion  of  faith 
in  Christ,  317 ;  his  idea  01  justification, 
318;  his  mystical  view  of  sanctifica- 
non^  320  £t  stg. ;  his  aspiration  for  the 
Divme  indwelling,  324 ,  his  conception 
of  and  devotion  to  the  Church,  tac ;  did 
not  hold  the  doctrine  of  papal  mfalli- 
^ty,  327 ;  freely  rebukes  ue  popes, 
328  4t  ssq.;  his  conception  of  the  cnar- 
acter  of  a  true  bidiop,  331 ;  his  ddfi- 
nition  of  the  sacraments.  332;  his 
understanding  of  the  Real  Presence, 
(4 ;  his  assurance  of  communion  witii 
le  saints,  335 ;  his  reverence  for  the 


334 
ttie 


Yiigin,  337 :  opposes  the  doctrine  of 
the  Immaculate  Conception,  338,350 


351 ;  called  a  Reformer  oefore  ue 
ormation,  341;  a  mystic^  342;  hymns 
of,  343 ;  regarded  as  a  thirteenth  Apos* 
tie, Us;  natural  that  he  should  apply 
himselrio  preaching,  376  j  tender  hu- 
mility combined  in  him  with  libertv  of 
spiri^  377 ;  his  utteruioe  not  enfeebled 
ay  his  numility,  378  i  intensity  of  his 
conviction,  1 70, 3Sio ;  learned  his  art  only 
by  practice,  382 :  his  habit  of  preaching 


-  «!  3861 

stance  of  his  sermons,  387 ;  their  pur- 
pose, 388;  the  nearness  of  etmal 
things,  the  key  of  his  life,  391 ;  the 
moral  earnestness  of  his  sermons,  192 ; 
on  church  mu^c,  393 ;  instance  of  his 
use  of  Scripture  in  preaching,  39^  etseq.; 
hb  fondness  for  ue  Song  of  Solomon 
in  exposition,  398;  his  power  of  im- 
agination, 400 ;  his  exhibition  of  per- 
sonal experience,  403  and  noig;  his 
philosophy  of  preaching,  405;  beauty 
of  his  person  and  charm  of  lus  utter- 
ance, A06 ;  his  impassioned  eloquence, 
407;  nis  readiness  in  rnly,  instances 
of,  408;  refuses  to  lead  the  Second 
CnuHule,  409 ;  hb  frafl  body^  409 ;  hb 
affection  for  Suger,  411;  fascination 
of,  for  hb  friends,  412;  sources  of 
his  power  in  address,  412 ;  enthusiasm 
for,  413;  entreated  to  become  bishop 
of  Ifikui,  414  ;  mirades  and  the  power 
of  prophecy  attributed  to,  414;  hb 
preawhing  at  Fs»b,  415;  inttiincct  of 


688 


INDBZ. 


tb»  power  of  hisdoooenoe^  415;  in- 
duces CoDzad  to  join  t&e  Crusade,  417; 
reooodles  thedtizens  of  Metz,  418; 
his  hymns,  418  st  m^;  critidsed  for 
his  severity  to  Abdlara,  427 ;  compered 
with  him,  444  -^  x^. ;  his  first  meeting 
with  him,  4CX,  459;  antagonism  b^ 
tween.  and  AD^ard,  460,  462  «/  sm,  ; 
his  abiiorrenoe  of  sensual  passion.  462; 
his  theology  founded  on  the  autnority 
of  Scripture,  ^63;  his  ooncmtion  en 
Faith,  ^64^  his  opinion  of  Ab^lard's 
▼iews  of  Uith  and  morals,  469  tt  stq, ; 
a  realist,  472:  his  repu^pance  to 
Abfiaid's  tneoiogical  teaching,  483; 
his  opposition  to  Aboard  inevitabte, 
487 ;  at  first,  shrank  from  the  contest, 
488,  491;  his  attention  caUed  to  Ab6- 
lanf  s  errors  by  William  of  St  Thierry, 
489;  has  an  interview  with  Ab^hud. 
490:  protests  against  his  theological 
teachings,  490 ;  appears  at  the  Council 
of  Sens  to  confute  Ab61ard,  491 ;  calls 
for  the  reading  of  passages  from  Ab6- 
lard's  writings,  493;  insists  upon  a 
sentence,  403;  Cousin's  comparison 
of,  with  Ab£lard,  502 ;  his  frail  physi- 
cal powers  contrasted  with  his  moral 
supremacy,  512  j/  seg»;  his  opportuni- 
ties, 513;  compared  with  Bossuet,  515  ; 
rdated  to  all  classes  of  sodety,  519; 
his  power  over  men,  520;  his  larse 
corres^ndence,  521 ;  summoned  to  the 
Counol  at  Etampes,  528 ;  the  decision 
as  to  the  disputed  papal  election  sub- 
mitted to,  529;  declares  in  favor  of 
Innocent,^  29 ;  reasons  for  his  deciuon, 
531 ;  condemns  the  spirit  of  Anadetus. 
31 ;  journeys  to  Italy  and  carries  all 
lefore  him,  537  «/  ssf. ;  his  reception  in 
Milan  538,  st^q^  returns  to  Italy,  539 ; 
Victor  Fourth  surrenders  to,  540;  at 
the  councils  preliminary  to  the  Second 
Crusade,  553:  preaches  the  Crusade, 
554  tt  uq,;  refuses  to  lead  the  Crusade, 
555 ;  preadies  the  Crusade  in  Germany, 
555 ;  reproached  for  the  failure  of  the 
Crusade,  559 ;  his  work  on  ^  Considera- 
tion," (60;  intervenes  in  the  dection 
of  the  Archlnshop  of  York,  562  tt  seq^ 
takes  the  part  or  the  bishop  of  Pans, 
(65 ;  his  reproof  of  Louis  Sixth,  c66 ; 
nis  dtfunpionship  of  the  Templars, 
567  ttseq. ;  his  diaracter  summea  up, 
574  et  ssq, ;  Dani^s  mention  of,  581 ; 
ikters  of^  quoted,  to  Hdnrich  m  Hur- 
dach,  157 ;  to  the  Count  of  Champaign, 
165 ;  to  Louis  Seventh,  171 ;  to  Inno- 
cent Second,  173,  563 ;  to  Eugenius 
Third,  174,  328 ;  to  the  Archbishop  of 
myttcoi    179;  to  WilUam   of  St. 


TUeny,  190;  to  the  abbot  of  Bona^ 
val^aoi;  to  tiie  bishop  of  T^cqres,  258; 
to  Honorins  Second,  328 ;  to  an  emi- 
nent bishop,  377 ;  to  a  yoimg  fady  of 
rank,  380 ;  to  a  young  kinsman,  390, 
391 ;  to  tne  monks  of  Monstier-Ramey, 
393;  to  a  young  abbot,  405 ;  to  Suger, 

tii:    to  Cdestine   Second,  564;  to 
ouis  Sixth,  566 ;  to  Honorins,  567. 

Bernard  of  Clugni,  hymns  of,  343. 419, 

583- 
BoLESAS,  king  of  Poland,  exfiommoni- 
cated  by  Hildebnnd,  104. 

BONATBITTURA,  tribute  of,  to  Bemazd. 
i3i  a94f  344;  stt  *  preadier,  373  and 
naU* 

Boniface,  963. 

BoNNEVAL,  abbot  of,  letter  of  Bcmaid 
to,  201. 

Books  transcribed  by  the  monks,  S41 
tt  seq. 

Bossuet.  tribute  of,  to  Bernard,  14 ;  af- 
frighted by  the  power  of  Hildebnnd, 
loi;  bom  in  Burgundy,  13c;  com* 
pared  wiUi  Bemaro,  5x5;  Voltaire  on 
nis  doquenoe,  515;  one  of  his  books 
put  on  the  Index,  517 ;  liis  mastery  of 
the  Frendi  language,  517 ;  Guisot  on, 
517 ;  his  power  locu,  518. 

BOURDALOUE,  388. 

B0UR6BS,  assembly  at,  to  conader  the 
Second  Crusade,  552. 

Breviary,  the  Roman.  compleAnd.  122; 
its  form  under  Hilddbrand,  368;  its 
influence  on  the  Anglican  litnrjor,  369. 

Brittany,  its  people  republican  at  heart, 

Bryce,  James,  quoted,  37. 

Buddhist  monasteries,  reaemblanoe  ef 
to  the  Catholic  institutions,  2x0. 

Bufpon,  bom  in  Burgundy,  135. 

Burgundy,  the  province  of,  1^4;  the 
birthplace  of  many  famous  in  literature, 
X14;  its  political  rdations,  13^ ;  dukes 
of,  136 ;  nmguages  of,  ixj ;  r«non  of, 
to  Spafai,  137 ;  Duke  of,  buried  in  the 
abbey  of  Citeanx,  2x7. 

Calvin,  ttibnte  of,  to  Beraaid,  15. 

.Cambridge,  foundation  of  the  UnivenHf 
of,  293. 

Canossa,  Henry  Fourth  at,  io6. 

Cafbt,  Hugh,  57. 

Carlyli^  qootitioa  fram,  i35. 


tSOEX. 


689 


^  Casouhb  books,"  fhe^  43.     . 

Catharists,  the,  567. 

Cathedrals  of  southern  Enrope,  rise 
of  the,  xai ;  of  Germsny  snd  Fnnoe, 


zss. 


Cbnobitbs,  the  systena  of,  introdnoed 
into  Europe,  ais. 

Cblano,  Thomas  of,  343. 

Champagnb,  Count  of,  Bernard's  letter 
to,  165. 

Champraux,  William  of,  lectures  of  at 
the  University  of  Paris,  293;  master 
of  the  school  of  Notre  Dame,  436 ;  at 
the  sbbnr  of  St.  Victor,  439 ;  in  colli- 
sion with  Ab^lard,  438,  439;  bishop 
of  Chilons-8ur-Mame,44o;  theassaii- 
ant  of  Ab^lard,  487. 

Chanson  de  Roland,  the,  124. 

Charlrm  AGNB,  hls  work,2a ;  Sismondi's 
praise  of,  sa^  magnitude  of  his  con- 
quests^  23 ;  his  expeditions,  organized 
campai^.  x^;  Guizot's  eulogy  of,  25 ; 
his  capitularies,  2$,  4a  ;  Guizofs  enu- 
eration  of  them,  ao;  his  oversight  of 
tiie  political^  rdigious,  and  social  in- 
terests of  his  realm,  a7;  his  scholar^ 
ship,  a8;  his  cultivation  of  the  arts, 
20 ;  sathers  learned  men  about  him,  29 ; 
his  literary  tastes,  2p  >  his  influence  on 
Enghtnd,  to;  receives  presents  from 
Haroun  al  Raschid,  31 ;  buried  at  Aiz- 
la-Chapdle,  31:  canonization  of,  31; 
modem  histonr  oegins  with  his  corona- 
tion, 31,  3a ;  his  reign  made  the  career 
of  Bernard  possible,  32  ;  vindication  of 
his  plan  in  the  failure  of  the  Empire, 
33 ;  nis  attention  to  matters  of  rdigton, 
43 ;  his  letters  to  Leo,  4^ ;  his  conse- 
cration by  the  pope  implied  no  tem- 
poral dq>endeno^  45 ;  schemes  of, 
compared  with  Hudrarand's,  9a :  rec- 
cognized  the  duty  of  public  preaching, 
361. 

Charles  the  Fat,  33. 

Charles  the  Eighth  of  France,  5x0. 

Charles.  Mrs.,  her  translation  of  one  of 
Bcvnard's  hymns,  430. 

Cbartres,  assembly  at,  555. 

Chartrbusb  Grand,  convent  of,  lao. 

Chivalry,  becomes  more  religions  in 
tone,  lao;  orders  of,  their  good  side, 
568. 

Christbndom,  the  conceptions  of  in  the 
eleventh  century,  74. 

*<  Christian  Theology,"  the,  of  Ab€lard, 

489- 


CRBiSTXAinTY,  Ustonr  of,  disphys  Ifae 
sway  of  the  truths  of  the  Gospel,  7,  8; 
becomes  a  secure  possession  of  EuropOi 
74 ;  power  of,  reasserted,  75. 

**Chronicon  Anglicanum,"  the,  254. 

^'Chronicon  Angliae,"  the,  254. 

'^Chronique  d'ldace,"  the  quotatioiis 
from  classical  writers  in,  243. 

Church,  the,  a  living  monument  of  vital 
realities  in  the  eleventh  century,  7c ; 
reformation  begins  to  be  sought  in  tne 
administration  of  the,  78;  the  only 
hope  of  Europe,  81 ;  alone  ecumenic^ 
and  permanent,  84,  85;  its  democracy 
and  moral  superiority,  86;  Bernard's 
conception  of  the,  325 ;  gave  univer- 
sality to  the  ttttemnoes  of  men  of  mark 
in  it,  514. 

CHURCH-bttikfing,  enthusiasm  of  the 
people  in,  343. 

Church  Fathers,  the,  Ab^lard's  opinioa 
of,  467  tt  sgq, 

Chrysostom,  on  the  compensations  for 
the  lack  of  preaching  in  country  par^ 
ishes,  357;  «»  *  preaAer,  357. 

Cicero,  writings  of,  read  in  the  monas- 
teries, 245. 

CiD,  the  chronide  of  the,  129  and  nai$^ 

575- 
CitA,  La,  the  heart  of  Paris,  43$. 

CiTBAUZ,  abbey  of,  120,  216:  its  off- 
shoots, 217;  its  repute  ana  import* 
anc^  219;  the  abbot  of,  a  prince  and 
cardinal,  216;  its  abbey-church,  219; 
regulations  of  life  in,  221. 

Clairvaux,  abbejr  of,  founded  bjy  Ber- 
nard, 22^;  its  site,  224;  hardships  en- 
oounterea  by  its  founders,  225;  its 
rapid  growth,  228 ;  the  Rule  of  Benedict 
observed  in,  229;  illuminated  missals 
made  by  the  monks  of,  256;  charities 
of,  258;  enthusiastic  docnption  of  by 
a  young  novice^  266;  the  affection  of 
the  monks  for,  268;  its  large  acces- 
sions, 269;  rebuilt,  270;  eight  hundred 
abbeys  affiliated  with,  271 ;  other  insti- 
tutions sprung  from,  575. 

Classical  literature,  almost  wholly  prs- 
served  for  us  by  the  monks,  245; 
quoted  by  the  momcs,  243. 

Classical  writers,  not  rejected  by  many 
of  the  Church  Fathers,  245. 

Clbment  Third,  108.  See  Gnibert  of 
RaveniuL 


690 


IMDSZ. 


Clskbnt  Seventh,  oontested  dectton  of, 
541 ;  results  of,  541  gt  seq. 

Clxmbnt  of  Alexandria,  245. 

Clbmiont,  tile  Crusades  inauguxated  at, 
no. 

Clugni,  abbey  of,  lao,  ai6;  Bernard  re- 
bukes the  luxury  at,  350  gt  sm,  ;  the 
abbey  of,  adheres  to  Innocent  Second, 
527. 

COLUMBA,  263. 

Columbus,  relation  of  the  Cmaades  to 
his  disooveiy,  549. 

CoMMBRCB  liberated,  77. 

CONCBPTUAUSM,  as  hdd  by  Abfiaid, 

475»  476. 
CoNBAD  Second,  edict  of,  37 ;  Btfnaid's 

address  to,  urglBg   him  to   Join  ^e 

Crusade^   417;    supports    Anadetus, 

536. 

*<CoNSiDBBATiON,"  Bemai4's  work  on, 
560. 

CoNTBNTs,  multiplication  of,  lao. 
CoBBBiL,  Ab61ard  at,  438. 

Cousin,  his  description  of  a  great  man 
fulfilled  by  Bernard,  275;  astoH^iiae, 
449 ;  caUs  Abilard  the  ^*  father  of  Mod- 
em Rationalism,"  464;  his  comparison 
of  Ab^lard  and  Bernard,  502 ;  nis  ser- 
vice to  Ab61ard's  memory,  503. 

Cbacow,  assassination  of  the  bishop  of, 
103. 

Cbiminals  rescued  and  refoimed  by  the 
monks,  261. 

CniBiLLON  the  dder,  bom  in  Burgundy, 

"35- 

Cbusadb,  the  First,  Hilddvand's  design 
carried  out  by  Urban  Second,  109; 
story  of,  no;  e£fect  of,  112 ;  the  liniit 
of,  126. 

Cbusadb  the  Second  suggested,  552; 
Bernard  preaches,  407,  415,  594:  uni- 
versal enthusiasm  for,  556,  558;  failure 
of,  558. 

Cbusadbs,  views  as  to  the,  545 ;  thdr 
results,  545 ;  Church  wealth  mcreased 
by,  546;  contributed  to  religious  en- 
frandusement,  547;  Guixot  on,  548 
fMtes;  commerce  extended  by.  549; 
awakening  of  the  human  mind  m  con- 
sequence of,  549;  large  part  taken  by 
the  French  in,  550. 

*'CusTOMABY,"  the  earliest,  38. 
CzBCHS,  the,  36. 


Dandolo,  the  bliad  Doge,  511. 

Dantb,  his  vision  of  Ansdm,  tio;  of 
Bemud,  581. 

Damiani,  Peter,  character  of,  114;  a 
hymn  of,  115. 

Dabk  Ages,  importance  of,  lOb 

David  of  Dinanto,  287. 

*^  Db  Contemptn  Mundi,"  tfas^  nf  B«^ 
nard  of  Clugni,  419. 

Dbnis,  the  abbey  of  St^  45s. 

Dbscabtbs,  Rte6,  432. 

**  DiCTATBS,"  of  Hildefaiand,  90. 

DiDBBOT,  Urthplaoe  of,  135. 

"  Dibs  IrsB,"  the^  343. 

DioNYSius  the  Areopagite,  the  pvtalive 
founder  of  the  aboey  of  St.  Denis, 
452. 

DoMiKiCAKS,  the,  as  preachcfs,  373. 

DuPFiBLD,  Dr.  S.  W^  transUtioo  b7,of 
Ab^lard's  hymn,  '' O,  quanta,  qnana,** 
500 IM^. 


Ebbbhabd  of  Salxbozg,  the  mother  o( 

147. 
Edda,  IceUndic,  the,  125. 

Education,  revival  of,  in  Enrope^  X22. 

Edwabd  the  Confessor  introdooes  tfie 
French  language  into  England,  78. 

Egyptian  monks,  211;  vast  numbers 
of,  212. 

Elbanob,  Queen,  aooompantes  the  Sec- 
ond Crusstde,  557. 

Elbvbnth  century,  a  period  of  tans- 
formation,  125. 

Empibb,  the  Roman,  the  fall  of,  fbDowed 
by  the  decline  of  morals  in  Europe^  ^7 ; 
partiallv  re-established,  76 ;  empire,  me^ 
establisned  in  the  German  lin^  76;  no 
longer  ecumenical,  128. 

End  of  the  World,  expectatioB  of  m 
Europe  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, 58  ti  seq, ;  evO  effect  of,  64. 

Ebmbnbbbga,  the  mother  of  Ansdn, 
147. 

Ebigbna,  John  Sootua,  his  boldness  in 
reUgious  speculations,  28^ ;  his  wchwnc 
essentially  panthcistiG,  286 ;  his  siicoes- 
sors^  287 ;  his  position  as  a  theolockal 
teacher,  ilhistiated  by  quotations  nom 
his  writings,  348  tt  s§q. 

EssBNBS,  the  sect  of  the,  210. 

^TAMPBS,  council  a^  528. 


INDBZ. 


681 


BuoBinus  Thiid,  Ui  letter  to  Abben 
HUdegaide,  145 ;  ktter  of  Bcnaxd  to, 

BvROPB,  dewIatioB  of,  after  tbe  failure 
of  the  Empire  of  Charlemagne,  3^; 
menaced  by  a  return  of  barbarism,  36; 
the  unirervd  belief  in,  of  the  commg 
end  of  the  world,  58  ;  terrifying  ap- 
pearancea,  60;  tempests  and  famine 
m,  61;  semi-delirium  of,  6a;  mppm- 
ritions  in,  62 ;  crisb  in  the  history  of, 
81 ;  diange  In  the  moral  life  of,  133. 

FArni,  tte  phce  in  the  attainment  of 
truth  in  Bernard's  system,  304 ;  Ab6- 
lard's  definition  of,  and  BeisArd's  criti- 
cism of  it,  470. 

Faminb  in  Europe  at  the  end  of  tb» 
tenth  century,  60, 61  • 

Fbux,  bishop  of  Urgdlia,  43. 

FiNSLON,  345,  S"- 

FBRTi,  abbey  of,  123. 

Feudal  System,  the  adrent  of,  3;; ;  the 
earliest  public  code  of ,  18 ;  a  military 
compact,  38  ;  the  sigmncance  of,  30; 
Voltaire's  characterization  of,  39;  the 
first  attempt  at  general  legiuation 
under  the,  40 ;  advantages  of,  40 ;  dis^ 
advantages  of,  41 ;  Sismondi  as  to,  41 ; 
its  ethical  justification,  41 ;  a  testimony 
to  tiie  awful  evil  of  the  time,  42. 

F0NTAINB8,  casUe  of,  Bernard's  birth- 
place, 134. 

FonTUNATUS,  419. 

Fountains  Abbey,  270;  Motley's  de- 
scription of,  271  npig;  sacked,  563. 

Fra  Angelioo,  273. 

Francs,  anarchy  in,  57;  growing  in 
power,  70* 

Francis  of  Assiu,  the  preadiiog  of,  372 ; 
his  missionaries,  373 ;  preached  bdore 
the  Sultan  of  Egypt,  548. 

Franciscans,  as  missionaries,  373. 

'*  Frank,"  the  name,  how  used,  550. 

Frrdbricr  Barbarossa,  seeks  the  ad- 
vice of  Abbess  Hildegarde,  146. 

Frxdsrick  Second,  182. 

Frbnch  httguage,  eariiest  written  in- 
stance of,  30;  takes  on  ito  modem 
fonn,  77. 78 ;  Introduoed  into  England, 

28 ;  Aoflard  one  of  the  first  to  use  it 
I  poetic  forms,  433. 

Gerard,  death  of  Bernard's  brotlier, 
i$9  ^  «f • 


Gbrhardt,  410. 

German  emperors,  76. 

Gbrson,  Chanodlor,  344. 

Gbrmany  not  in  fiivor  of  the  Cmaadis 
556 ;  wonderful  result  of  Bcnard's  Mp- 
peal  in,  556. 

Gibbon,  tribute  of,  to  Bernard,  16;  as  to 
Charlemagne's  capitularies,  25 ;  as  to 
Charlemagne's  love  of  leaining,  30 ;  on 
the  influence  of  the  early  preadiers, 
357 ;  influence  of  Bossuet  on,  517. 

Glaber,  Raoul,  quoted,  51  upfs,  yy, 

121. 

Glabbb,  Rodolph,  on  the  frightful  ap- 
pearances at  ue  end  of  the  tenth  cen- 
tury, 60  and  nets. 

Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  140. 

GOTTSCBALK,  288,  290. 

Grace,  Divine,  Bernard's  ooooeption  of, 
310  ;  its  effect,  312. 

Gbatian,  254. 

Gregory  Seventh.    See  Hildebrand. 

Gregory  tiie  Great,  quoted,  225 ;  under- 
stood the  value  of  preaching,  359; 
his  Rule  for  Pastors,  359  and  niit, 
361. 

Gregory  Nazianzen  as  a  preacher,  358. 

GROSTtTE,  Robert,  on  the  fallibility  of 
the  pope,  284. 

GuiBBRT  of  Nogent,  on  the  right  way  of 
making  sermons,  369. 

GuiBBRT  of  Ravenna,  oonseGrated  pope, 
108. 

GuiDO  Reni,  344. 

GuizoT,  his  estimate  of  the  importance 
of  the  Dark  Ages  quoted,  11 ;  as  to 
Charlemagne's  campaigns,  24;  as  to 
his  capitiuaries,  26 ;  aomiration  of,  for 
Alcuin,  244 ;  on  the  monastic  life,  264 ; 

2uotecL  345 ;  on  F6nelon,  517 ;  00  the 
Inisaoes,  548  ndss, 

GuYON,  Madame^  345. 


Hallam,  Mr.,  on  tiie  risht  of  sahctnary, 
262;  on  the  letters  between  Ab^lard 
and  Hflofse,  427,  458. 

Haroun  al  Raschid,  sends  ambassadors 
with  presente  to  Charlemagne,  31. 

Heinsius,  Daniel,  tribute  of,  to  Bernard^ 

15- 
HiLolsB,  letters  of,  to  Ab61ard,  427, 458 ; 

her  intelligence  and  leaminff,  446^  447; 

seduced  l^  Abflard,  448;  her  noUfity 


692 


IND9K. 


of  cfaancter,  448:  b  eiihiWWifd  at  the 
Paradete,  457;  bnzied  by  the  side  of 
Ab^lard,  501. 

Hbmsy  the  Fowler,  defeata  the  Hm^ga- 
riana,  36,  76. 

Hbnry  Second,  of  Gennany,  tsJcca  tiie 
vow  of  obedience^  215. 

Hbnky  Second,  of  England,  hia  hesita- 
tion in  regard  to  Innocent's  election 
OTeroome  by  Bernard,  53a. 

Hbnry  Fourth,  Hildebiand's  conflict 
with,  zoo ;  pronounoes  Hilddarand  an 
apostate  monk,  100:  anathematized, 
100 ;  submits  to  Hildeorand  at  Canossa, 
and  is  absolved,  106;  refuses  to  submit 
to  the  test  of  the  consecnted  wafer.  107 ; 
intrigues  against  Hildebrand  ana  con- 
ducts Guibert  to  Rome,  107 ;  his  end, 
108. 

Hbnry  of  Nonnandy,  Bernard's  appeal 
to,  to  recognize  Innocent  as  pope,  172. 

Hbro  Book,  the^  125. 

HxLDBBRAND,  becomes  pope,  So,  88; 


84 ;  the  idealist  of  his  time,  85 ;  the 
story  of  his  career,  85  €t  stq. ;  educated 
at  Rome.  86 ;  enters  the  monastery  of 
Clugni,  87;  appointed  superior  of  the 
monastery  of  St.  Paul  without  the  gates, 
87;  his  influence  in  the  election  of 
popes,  88 ;  chosen  to  the  pontificate, 
88;  the  Puritan  of  his  century,  89 ;  the 
kay  to  his  life,  89 ;  the  supremacy  of 
tiie  Church  his  aim,  90;  his  ^Dic> 
tates,"  00 ;  meant  to  make  the  purity 
of  the  Church  match  its  supremacy. 
92:  his  personal  standard  of  practiau 
religion,  93 ;  his  letter  to  the  Countess 
Beatrice  and  Matilda  of  England,  93 ; 
interferes  in  behalf  of  women  perse- 
cuted as  witdics,  91;  his  sense  of  sin, 
94 ;  felt  himself  a  divine  minister,  94 ; 
opposition  to,  95 ;  not  secure  in  his 
capital,  95,  q6;  sources  of  his  vast 
powers,  96 ;  his  character  fortified  his 
power.  97;  weak  and  sickly,  98^  a 
secondary  conscience  formed  in  lum, 
99;  his  contest  with  Henry  Fourth, 
100 ;  anathematized  him,  100 ;  his  let- 
ters to  the  German  legates  and  to  the 
kings  of  France  and  Gennany,  102 ;  his 
ambition,  103;  his  missionary  activi- 
ties, 103;  ezcommunicates  Bolesas  of 
Poland,  104 ;  relaxes  his  deueca  against 
simony  and  profligacy,  105  ;  denies  the 
objective  validity  of  the  sacraments, 
105 ;  absolves  Henry  at  Canossa,  106 ;  1 


Qiiw  ntNB  Kon^  106  J  broiig^  vadp 
108;  his  death  at  Saiemo,  zo8;  Us 
moral  victory,  109 ;  his  plan  of  a  om- 
sade,  109;  a  monk  at  Citeans,  2x9; 
tendiendes  under,  caUing  for  preaching, 
367- 
HiLDBGABDB,  Abbess,  an  account  of  her 
life,  142  itf  Jiff. ;  a  letter  of,  quoted,  143 ; 
her  prophetic  power,  144  €t  uq, 

«  HisTOiRB  Litt^ntre  de  la  France,"  tbc^ 

a55- 
<*  History  of  hb  Calamities,*'  Ab€laid*s, 

457,  503- 
"  Holy  Roman  Empire,"  tiie,  in  Chari^ 

magne's  period,  46. 

Holy  Land,  b^;iiia  to  be  visited  by 
Europeans,  78. 

Hornb,  Bishop,  quoted,  236. 

HoNORius  Second,  Bernard's  reboke  of, 
in  the  case  of  the  Bishop  of  Paris,  567. 

Hue,  the  Abb6,  on  the  Buddhist  mon- 
asteries, 210  naU, 

Hugh  First  of  Burgundy,  213 ;  Rfauked 
by  Gregory  Seventh,  156;  a  cruaader, 

55«- 

Hugh  of  Macau,  32> 

Hugh  of  Provence,  52. 

Humbbrt,  rebuked  by  Bernard,  269. 

Hungarians,  ravages  of,  3c ;  their  power 
broken  by  Henry  the  Fowler  and  Otbo^ 
36. 

Hymns,  growing  out  of  the  mystical 
theokigy,  343 ;  Bernard's,  418  §t  stq. 

Ida  oI  Booilkjii,  140. 

Imagination,  the  power  of,  in  Bcnaid^ 

400. 

iMiBRt  Safait,  legend  of,  216. 

<*  Imitation  of  Christ,"  Uie,  255,  344. 

Immaculatb  Conoeptwn,  doctrine  ol, 
resisted,  284 ;  denied  by  Bernard,  358; 
and  by  other  Fathers  of  the  Church, 

339- 
India  the  birtbfdaoe  of   mwiachiti, 
210. 

Industry,  revival  of,  77. 

Inpalubility,  paqpal,  doctrine  of,  aol 
held  by  BemardL  327. 

INNOCBNT  Second,  172 ;  letter  of  Ber- 
"»nl  to,  173;  diosen  pope.  523;  flees 
from  Rome,  $25 ;  wekomed  at  uhigni, 
J27 ;  Benoani  declares  in  his  favor,  529 ; 
Henry  Second  and  Lolfaaire  won  to 
causey  532  ti  stq,;  visits 


IRUU. 


698 


ct| ;  crofms  the  soo  of  Lonb  Sixth  at 
KSoma,  535 ;  oonducted  to  Rome  Inr 
Lothaire,537 ;  recognixed  by  the  Church 
at  large,  540. 

Innocent  Third,  influence  of,  as  a 
preacher,  374;  and  tlie  spread  of  tiie 
Scriptures,  376. 

Iksanb,  the  first  institutions  for  the, 
proceeded  from  the  monasteries,  361. 

Instruction  given  by  the  monks  out- 
side the  abbeys,  255. 

"  Intbllbctus,"  tlie  dear  mental  ap- 
prehension of  truth,  304. 

«  Introduction  to  Thecdogy**  of  Ab^ 
htfd,  450,  489. 

IRNBRIUS,  Z33. 

Iron  Age,  the,  so  called  by  Baronius,  20. 
"IvANHOB,"  Scotfs,  234, 573. 

*' Jbrusalbm  tiie  Golden,"  419. 

**  jBSUfdulds  memoria,"  421. 

Jews,  their  condition  in  Western  Europe, 
176;  animosity  against,  178;  crusade 
ot  Rudolph  against,  178;  Bernard  ap- 
peals in  their  ravor,  179 ;  faces  the  mob 
and  saves  them,  180;  enriched  during 
the  Crusades,  545. 

John  of  Antiocfa.    See  Chrysostom. 

John  of  Salisbury,  294. 

John  Tenth,  Pope,  48. 

John  Eleventh,  Pope,  49. 

John  Twelfth,  Pope,  49 ;  vileness  of,  542. 

John  Twenty-thiid,  his  character,  542. 

JoUBBRT  quoted,  412. 

Justification,  Bernard's  conception  of, 

318. 
Justin  Martyr,  would  have  the  andcnt 

writers  read,  245. 

Rbmpis,  Thomas  2k,  255 ;  a  mysdc,  344. 
Kingdom  of  God,  the  rebuilding  of,  evi- 
dent to  the  Christian  student,  8. 

KiNGSLBY,  canon,  speaks  of  a  <*  hysteri- 
cal element"  in  Bernard's  character, 
192. 

La  BRUvtRB,  sarcasm  of,  388. 
Lanfranc,  his  career,  115;  archbbhop 
of  Canterbury,  116,  119, 249. 

Langton,  Stephen,  265. 
Latin  Quarter,  the,  436. 
Latin,  the  universal  literary  language 
in  Bernard's  time,  514. 


Landob  on  SoStode,  237. 

Langub  d'ofl  and  kuigue  d'oc,  137. 

Lamartinb,  birthplace  of,  135. 

Launomar,  legend  of,  216. 

Laurbntian  library,  the,  246. 

Lbcky.  Mr.,  260 ;  quoted,  242 ;  on  the 
Knignts  of  the  Crusades  and  of  Chiv* 
airy,  569. 

Lbidradb,  letter  of,  to  Charlemagne, 
dted,  365. 

Lbo  Third  refuses  to  sanction  the  in- 
sertion of  the  Filioque  in  the  aeed, 

43- 
Lbo  Fourth,  wall  of,  34. 

Lbo  Fifth,  48. 

Lbo  the  Ninth,  80 ;  regard  of,  for  Hilde- 

farand,  87* 
LiONOR,  Saint,  legend  of,  216. 

Lbttbrs.  the  character  and  influence  of 

Bernard's,  521 ;  took  the  place  of  books, 

522. 
LiBRARiBS  of  manuscripts  be^n,  122; 

in  the  monasteries,  242 ;  rich  m  andent 

works,  246. 

Litbbaby  activity  in  the  twelfth  century, 
281. 

LOBD,  the  expectation  of  the  appearance 
of  the,  58. 

Lord's  Supper,  the,  efficacy  of  in  Ber- 
nard's view,  310,  333. 

Lothaire,  declines  to  accept  Innocent, 
i;33;  Bernard  obtains  his  adhesion  to 
nun,  534 ;  conducts  Innocent  to  Rome, 

537. 
Lombard,  Peter,  294. 

Louis  Sixth,  convenes  a  ooundl  at  lltam- 
pes  to  dedde  upon  the  disputed  papal 
dection.  528 ;  dispute  of  Bernard  with, 
concerning  the  Bishop  of  Paris,  565 
tt  seg, 

Louis  Seventh,  letter  of  rebuke  to,  from 
Bernard,  170:  effect  of,  172;  in  favor 
of  the  Second  Crusade,  552. 

Louis  Eighth,  ordinance  of,  concerning 
usury,  the  first  attempt  at  general 
legislation,  40. 

Louis  Ninth,  579. 

Louis,  the  son  of  Charlemagn^  recdves 
the  diadem  of  his  father,  32 ;  lib  super- 
vbion  of  the  dergy,  44. 

Louvre,  the,  436. 

Luther,  tribute  of.  to  Bernard,  15; 
quoted,  137;  hb  opinion  of  Benurdf 
381;  a  like  spbit  with  him,  jSa. 


18 


594 


nmoL 


LuxuKTf  Bcmod*!  donmcifttioA  of, 
390- 

Mabiulon,  tribute  of,  to  Bernard,  14 ; 
as  to  th!e  d^gndatioD  of  the  popes, 

47. 
Macaulat,  Lord,  contrasts  physical  and 
intellectual  force  in  andent  and  nxxlcm 
times,  509. 

Malachy,  last  word  of,  411. 

Malmbsbuky,  William  oJf,  on  Sylvester 
Second,  55. 

Martin  Fifth,  election  of,  543. 

Martinbau,  James,  quoted,  580. 

Marco  PauijO,  549. 

Matilda,  *tfae  Great  Countess,'*  the 
friend  of  Gregory  Seventh,  139;  im- 
mortalized by  Dante  and  Qmabue, 
140. 

Matilda  of  ffngland,  Hildebrand's  i&- 
ply  to,  93,  141;  enters  a  nunneiy, 
215. 

Matthias  Claudius,  00  the  Goepel  of 
Saint  John,  346. 

Marozia,  48. 

Martbl,  Charles,  21. 

Martins,  tribute  of,  to  Bernard,  14. 

Mblancthon,  resemblance  of  to  Ber* 
nard,342. 

Mblun,  school  established  at,  by  Ab6- 
lard,  438. 

Mbtz,  Bernard  reconciles  the  citizens  of, 
418. 

MiCHBLST,  quoted,  37 ;  on  the  disordered 
mental  ooncfition  at  men  at  the  end  of 
the  tenth  centurVj  62.  65 1  as  to  Robert 
the  Pious,  76 ;  his  aescription  of  Bur- 

Sindy,  134;  on  the  character  of  the 
retons,  432;  quoted  as  tc  Ab61ard*s 
treatment  of  matters  of  Faith,  477. 

Milan,  Bernard's  escape  from  the  im- 
portunities of  the  people  of,  414;  en- 
thusiasm for  Bernard  in,  538  gt  stq, 

Milman's  explanation  of  the  corruption 
in  Italy,  47;  his  estimate  of  Bernard, 
200;  on  Bernard's  intervention  in  the 
dection  of  the  Archbishop  of  York, 
562. 

MlNNBSINGBRS,  the,  I24. 

Missionary  activities  of  Hildebrand, 
103 ;  work,  the,  of  the  monasteries,  262 ; 
tendency  revealed  anew  under  Hilde- 
brand, JJS7. 


MOBAMKBDAinSM,  dtt  «f ,  46. 

Mohammbdams,    threaten    JcnalcB, 

MoNASTBRiBS,  the  first,  in  Europe,  an; 
became  vast  missionary  centres,  213; 
men  of  rank  and  influence  in,  2»; 
at  thdr  height,  2x4 ;  the  retreat  of  me 
pious  and  the  weadc,  215 :  became  the 
centres  of  dvilizing  influenoe,  2x5; 
contained  the  only  iibraries  of  Europ^ 
242;  vast  extent  of  tiie  diarities  of, 
258;  their  ministry  to  tlie  sick,  259: 
devotion  of  their  inmates  in  times  of 
plague,  260;  atroitt  personal  attach- 
ments formed  in,  265;  a  practical  de- 
mocracy established  in,  265. 

Monastic  life,  its  use  and  abuses,  207 ; 
its  relation  to  the  times  of  Bernard. 
209;  tendency  towards,  exhibited 
among  the  Hebrews  in  the  sect  of  the 
Essenes,  209 ;  in  the  Buddhist  monas- 
teries, aio;  tendency  in  the  nature  of 
man  to  the,  an  ;  rules  of,  229;  its  char- 
acter, 233,  234;  strong  attraction  of. 
for  finer  spirits,  235  d  stq. ,  not  one  ot 
indolence,  264. 

Monastic  establishments  in  Burgundy 
216. 

Monkish  Chroniclers,  our  indebtedneis 
to,   for  our   knowledge  of     history, 

a53- 

Monks  the  dvilizers  of  Europe,  aic; 
our  indebtedness  to  for  preserving  tne 
andent  writings,  242;  utetary  labors 
of,  252 ;  old  and  innrm^  provision  for, 
266 ;  their  love  for  theu-  monasteries, 
266 ;  wicked  and  unbelievmg,  272. 

Montalbmbert  quoted,  56. 

Montb  Cassino,  121,  212 1  manuscripts 
of  the  andent  classics  m  the  library 
of,  246 ;  supports  Anadetus,  537. 

Moral  life  of  Europe,  change  in,  133. 

MoTLBY,  J.  L.,  on  **  Fountain's  Abbey," 
271  naU, 

Mount  St.  Generi^e,  459. 

Mu ROACH,  Henry,  letter  of  Beraard  to, 
IC7;  election  of  to  the  archbishopric 
of  Vork  favored  by  Bernard,  56a ;  con* 
firmed  by  the  pope,  563. 

Music,  Church,  Bernard  00,  593. 

Mystical  interpretation  of  Scripture  by 
Bernard,  301 ;  theology  of  Bernard  and 
others,  hjrmns  arising  tn,  343;  ardu- 
tectural  and  artistic  ou^owths  of,  143, 
344 ;  theology,  influenoe  of,  on  Ber- 


mon. 


696 


Bard's  activity,  37^;  use  of  Scripture 
by  Bernard,  394. 
HVSTXCS,  famous,  344. 

Nafolbon's  scheme  compared  with  Hil- 
debrand's,  91. 

Nealb,  Dr.  J.  M.,  on  the  Anglican 
Prayer-book  and  the  Roman  Breviaiy, 
133  naU, 

N  BANDER,  tribute  of,  to  Bernard,  15; 
as  to  the  Abbess  HUdegarde,  143,  144 ; 
opinion  of,  concerning  the  power  to 
work  mirades,  199;  on  the  charities  of 
the  monasteries,  358;  quoted,  260 ;  on 
the  unbelieving  and  sceptical  Catholics. 
391;  instances  in,  of  the  power  of 
preaching,  371 ;  as  to  Ab61ard's  theol- 
ogy, 465- 

Nbwman,  J.  H.J  on  the  industry  of  the 
monks  as  copyists,  246  neU* 

NlBBLUNGENLIED,  the,  I24. 

Nicholas  Second,  8a 
NiVARD,  brother  of  Bernard,  164* 
NoRBBRT  as  a  preacher,  370, 454 ;  assails 

Aboard,  487. 
NoMiNAUSM  Uught  by  Rosoellinus,  434, 

474. 
Normandy  ceded  to  the  Northmen,  3$. 

NoRTHMBN,  incursions  of  into  France, 
34 ;  Normandy  ceded  to,  35. 

NoTRB  Dame,  the  school  of,  436. 

Opinion,  its  relations  to  Faith  and  dis- 
cernment in  Bernard's  S3rstem,  304. 

Ordbricus,  as  to  Matilda  of  England. 
,'41,  246;  his  knowledge  of  classical 
'"authors,  253,  256. 

Origbn,  245. 

Original  Sin,  Bernard's  belief  as  to, 

108;  the  doctrine  of,  as  held  by  Ab6- 

Iard,479. 

OrliIans,  Bishop  of,  on  the  wicked 
popes,  51,  52 ;  the  Archbishop  of,  362. 

Otho,  of  Germany,  36,  56. 

Oxford,  University  of,  its  foundati<m, 

293. 

Pagan  gods,  belief  in,  revived  in  Chris- 
tian Europe,  55. 

Pandbcts  of  Justinian,  copy  of,  trans- 
feired  to  Pisa,  123. 

Papacy,  corruption  of  the,  47  it  uq. 

Papal  election,  the  peril  of  a  disputed, 

5^5,  54«- 


Pakaclbtb,  the  convent  of,  founded  by 
Ab61aid,  453 ;  transferred  to  H61oisc^ 
457  and  nate^  501. 

Paris,  Matthew,  chronide  of,  253. 

Paris,  foundation  of  the  University  of, 
293 ;  in  Ab61ard's  day,  43s  i  great  num- 
ber of  students  at,  442 ;  thie  Bishop  of, 
defended  by  Bernard,  565. 

Paschal  Second,  113;  at  Citeauz,  319. 

Paul  of  Thebes,  an. 

Paulicians,  the,  367. 

Paulus  Diaoonus,  29. 

Pblagius,  a  Breton,  aococding  to 
Michdet,  43a. 

Pbtbr  the  Hermit,  no,  409. 
Pbtbr  Lombard,  hb  collection  of  the 
statements  of  the  Fathers,  504. 

Pbtbr  of  Pisa,  29,413;  silenced  by  Ber- 
nard, 539. 

Pbtbr  the  Venerable,  the  mother  of, 
147 ;  accusation  of,  a^nst  the  Jews, 
writings  of,  254 ;  his  Resurrection 
hymn,  343 ;  the  mother  of,  371 ;  letter 
of,  to  Bernard.  410;  intercedes  for 
Awfard  with  the  pope,  497 ;  descrip- 
tion of  Ab6lard's  last  years  m  a  letter 
of,  to  Hdoise,  499. 

Pbtrarch,  a  mystic,  344. 

Pbtrobrusians,  the,  367. 

Philip  First,  76. 

PiACBNZA,  the  assembly  at^  iia 

Pinbl,  a6i. 

Piron,  135. 

Pisa,  cathedral  of,  121. 

Plato  known  to  the  medisval  monks, 
252,  468;  realism  of,  adopted  by 
Augustme,  472. 

•*PoLYCHRONicoN,"   the,   of   Higden, 

*54* 

PoNTiGNV,  abbey  at,  223. 

POPB,  no  conflict  between  the,  and  the 
emperor  in  Charlemagne's  period,  45. 

PoPBs,  nine  in  thirteen  years,  47. 

«*  PORNOCRACY,  the,"  47. 

pRAYBR-BOOK,  Anglican,  its  dependence 
on  the  Roman  Breviary,  122,  123 
note. 

Prbaching,  the  art  of,  in  modem  times 
compared  with  that  of  an  earlier  day, 
355 ;  the  chief  office  of  the  bishop,  356 ; 
instances  of  the  power  of,  357  et  seq,, 
367 ;  need  of,  in  the  twelfth  century, 
370;  powerful,  of  an  obscure  monk 


696 


INDEX. 


371 ;  instance  of  the  power  of,  375  and 

MOit, 

Premonstrants,  the  order  of,  264, 370. 
PROTBSTAirr  clement  in  Abflard,  427. 
pRUDBNTius,  419. 
PULLBIN,  Robert,  293. 

Questions,  absurd,  discussed,  485, 
QuiNET,  Edgar,  birthplace  of,  135. 

Rabanus,  Maunis,  requirements  of,  in  a 
preacher,  366. 

Real  Presence,  the  doctrine  of,  opposed 
by  Berengarius,  119;  the,  Banard*s 
idea  of,  334. 

Realism  as  held  by  Bernard,  472 
et  s€q, 

Rbinekb  Puchs,  the  legend  of,  124. 

R^MUSAT,  Charles  de,  on  the  fame  of 
Ab^lard,  410,  435 ;  describes  the  ap- 
pearance of  Abeiard.  442;  as  to  H6- 
loise,  449,  464,  469 ;  nis  explanation  of 
Abfiara*s  refusal  to  plead  at  the  Coun- 
cil of  Sens,  495 ;  his  estimate  of  Abd- 
lard's  fame,  503. 

Rheims,  Council  at,  535. 

Robert  the  Pious,  76. 

Robert,  Bernard's  letter  to  his  yoong 
relative,  158. 

Robert  of  Arbrissd,  371. 

Roger  of  Hovenden's  Chronide,  254. 

Roger  of  Sicily,  413;  supports  Pope 

Anadetus,  536,  539. 

Rome,  corruption  in,  after  the  fall  of  the 
Empire,  47;  had  never  lost  the  place 
of  the  capital  of  the  world,  96;  cap- 
tured by  the  Southern  Normans,  108. 

RoscBLiNUS,  his  Influence  on  Ab^lard, 
434;  condemned  for  maintaining  the 
doctrine  of  nominalism,  434,  439;  his 
teaching  of  nominalism,  474. 

Rousseau,  Confessions  of,  457. 

Rudolph,  crusade  of,  agunst  the  Tews, 
178 ;  met  and  subdued  by  Bernard,  180. 

RuDBSHBiMBR  BcTg,  vincs  of,  planted  by 
Charlemagne,  32. 

'*  Rule  for  Pastors,"  the,  of  Gregory  the 
Great,  359  and  noU^  360;  translated  by 
King  AUred,  361. 

Sacraments,  their  objective  validity 
denied  ^xj  Hildebcand,  105 :  the  seven, 


whcB  fifst  iin(Tiff<1,  3839  Beraavd't 
conception  of,  332,  334. 

Saint  Armour,  William  of,  writes  apoBSt 
the  mendicant  orders,  284. 

Saint  Benignos,  the  abbey  of,  at  Dijoa, 

216. 
Saint  Evroalt,  abbey  of,  121. 
Saint  Gall,  263. 

Saint  Mark's  at  Venice,  completioB  oC, 
121. 

Saint  PBnl  witliont  the  WaOs.  mem. 
astery  of,  its  vileness^  C3;  Hiloefarand 
appomtea  superior  ot,  87. 

"Saint  Satan,"  Hildebrand  so  called, 

83. 
Saint  Victor,  Hu^  and  Richard,  343 ; 

the  abbey  of,  439. 

Saints,  intercessory  prayer  to,  187. 

Sales,  Frands  de,  a  mystic,  344. 

Salisbury,  John  of,  quotations  irom 
classical  writers  in  his  **  PoUcraticiis,*' 

«43- 
Saracens,  invasion  of,  21 ;  tncursioiis 
of,  on  ttie  Mediterranean  coast,  34; 
reappearance  of,  in  Spain,  at  the  end 
of  the  tenth  century,  60;  power  ol, 
broken  in  Europe,  78. 

Sardinia,  Saracens  dislodged  from,  78. 

Schism  at  the  contested  dectioa  of 
Clement  Seventh  and  Urban  Sixth,  541 
tt  seq, 

^  SciTO  teipsum,'*  the,  of  Ab61ard,  47S. 

School  of  the  Palace,  Charlcmagne'Si 

Schools  established  by  Lddrade,  * 

Scriptorium,  the,  in  the  monastw.  .«^ 
description  of,  240 ;  the  work  done  in, 
241  it  ssq. 

Scriptures,  services  rendered  by  tliB 
monks  in  the  preservation  of,  247  €i  Mf  ./ 
splendid  copies  of,  248^  249 ;  value  set 
upon,  249 ;  written  copies  of,  their  great 
number,  250;  Greek,  preserved  by  the 
monks,  250 ;  number  of,  known  to  ex- 
ist, 251 :  the  widening  study  of,  an 
dEFect  ot  preadiing,  376;  Bernard's 
mystical  use  of,  394 1  the  form  of,  b 
stimulation  to  Bernard,  402. 

Seal,  the  royal,  Ab6Iard's  iUnstiatioa  as 
to  the  Trinity,  drawn  from,  481. 

Sens,  Ardibishop  of,  Bernard's  addien 
to,  on  the  character  of  a  true  bishop, 
33»»  459»  461,  490 »  Coundl  of.  the  as- 
sembly present  at,  492;  AbeUrd  re- 
fuses to  plead  at,  493;  the  city  of,  49a. 


INDBZ. 


597 


SsHcrDs  Third,  47, 48. 

SiviGNi,  Madame  de,  bom  in  Burgundy, 

135- 
"  Sic  ct  Non,"  the,  of  AWlard,  469. 

SiSMONDi,  his  praise  of  Charlemagne,  aa ; 
on  the  condition  of  Europe  in  the  tenth 
century,  36 ;  on  the  feudal  system,  41 ; 
on  the  beiidf  throughout  Europe  of  the 
end  of  the  world  as  at  hand,  59.   • 

Social  conditions  of  Europe,  change  in, 

133- 
SoissoNS,  council  at,  451, 475. 

SoLiTUDB  and  suffering,  the  nursery  of 

sublime  thoughts,  236,  237. 
Song  of  Solomon,  a   favorite  part  of 

Scripture  with  Bernard,  398. 

SouTHBY,  on  the  Chronicle  of  th«  Cid, 

129  noU, 
SozoMSN,  on  the  oongregatioDS  of  monks 

"  Stabat  Matbr,»  the,  343. 
Stephen  Ninth,  80. 

SuGBR,  Bernard's  affection  for,  411 ;  ab- 
bot of  St.  £>enis,  453 ;  sent  by  Louis 
Sixth  to  greet  Innocent,  532 ;  opj^oses 
the  Second  Crusade,  552;  appomted 
regent,  557. 

<<  SuMMiB  Thedogiae,"  the,  of  Thomas 
Aquinas,  504. 

Supererogation,  doctrine  of,  336. 

Sylvester  Second,  believed  to  be  a 
magidan,  55. 

Symonds,  John  Addington,  his  trans- 
lation   of  one  of    Bearnard's  hymns, 

Taylor,  Isaac,  on  the  preservation  of 
the  manuscripts  of  the  Scriptures  in 
the  monasteries,  251. 

Templars,  the  order  of,  Bernard's 
championship  of,  ^67;  character  of, 
c6q  ;  its  origm  and  history  570  ei  uq, ; 
Michelet  on,  573  notes;  its  end,  573. 

Tbscblin,  the  father  of  Bernard,  137  ; 
his  character  and  drcumstanoes,  138, 

i39»  155,  55"- 
Themistoclbs,  saying  attributed  to, 

394. 
Thbodora,  48. 

ThIodult,  29;  schools  established  by, 
365. 

THioDULPH  of  Saint  Thieny,  legend 
of,  2X6. 


Theological  doctrine,  orgimization  of 
in  the  twelfth  century,  282. 

Thomas  Aauinas,  as  a  preacher,  374 
and  noU;  nis  power  over  his  hearers, 
375  noU ,  his  **  Sumnus  Theologiae/' 
504. 

Thomas  of  Celano,  419. 

Ticknor  onthe  Chronicle  of  theCid,  129 
noUn 

Tithes,  the  payment  of,  first  made 
compulsory  by  Charlemagne,  43. 

Tours,  tiie  victory  of,  its  importance,  21. 

Transubstantiation,  doctrine  of, 
when  settled,  282;  foundation  of  the 
doctrine  of,  290;  first  set  forth,  290, 

334- 
Trinity,  the,  Abdard's  doctrine  of,  181 ; 
his  illustration  of  the  royal   seal  to 
elucidate  this,  481;   the   doctrine  of 
Nominalism  applied  to,  by  Roscellinus. 

Troyes.  the  Council  of,  the  order  of 
Templars  recognized  at,  570,  572. 

Troubadour  period  begun  in  France^ 

124. 
Truce  of  God,  the,  63. 
Turner,  Sharon,  257. 

Twelfth  century,  the  signs  of  advance 
in,  127. 

Universities,  foundation  of,  293. 

Univbrsity  of  Paris,  beginning  of, 
440. 

Urban  Second  at  Citeauz,  109 ;  inaugu- 
rates the  Crusades  at  Clermont,  iii; 
death  of,  113. 

Urban  Sixth,  contested  election  of, 
541 ;  results  of,  541  tt  stq. 

Usury,  ordinance  against,  40. 

Utrbcht,  Bishop  of,  97. 


Vaughan,  R.  B,,  00  Bonaventura  and 
Thomas  Aquinas,  374  note. 

<<Vbni  Sancte  Spiritus,'*  the,  122. 

VizBLAi,  eloquent  iq;>peal  of  Beniard 
at,  for  the  Crusade,  554. 

Victor  Second,  8o. 

Victor  Third,  413. 

Victor  Fourth,  elected  pope,  but  vans 
renders  to  Bernard,  540. 

ViLLKMAiN,  on  Hildebrand's  claims,  91  { 
as  to  Hildebrand's  ambition,  103. 


598 


IHDIZ. 


ViNCBNT  of  Beanvtift,  255. 

VoLTAiRB,  tribute  of,  to  Bernard,  15; 
his  characterixatkm  of  the  feudal  sys- 
tem, 39;  tribute  of,  to  the  monastic 
life,  234,  235  note;  Ab6iard  ooiupared 
*  '^h,  494  and  note;  on  Bossuet's  elo- 
quence, 515. 


Waldbnsians,  the,  367. 

Walpolb,  Horace,  reasons  of,  for  not 
becoming  a  Catholic,  221. 

Walter  of  St  Victor,  the  assailant  of 
Ab61ard,  487. 

Washing  of  feet,  Bernard's  estimate  of, 

3>>- 
Wends,  the,  36. 

Westminster  Hall,  129. 

William,  Duke  of  Aquitatne,  Bernard's 
heroic  opposition  to,  167  ^  stq, 

William   of   Champeaux,  consecnles 
Bernard  abbot  of  Clainreaux,  228. 

William  of  Guienne,  124. 

William  of  Nonnandy,  78,  80 ;  desires 
to  become  a  monk,  213* 


William  of  St.  Thierry,  letter  of  Ber- 
nard  to,  190;  his  aooount  of  Bernard 
in  his  hut,  193 ;  brion  Bernard's  atten- 
tion to  errors  in  Abtiard's  teaching, 
489. 

William  of  Orange  and  the  Duke  of 
Luxembourg  contrasted  by  Macaolay, 
509. 

William,  elected  Arcfafaishop  of  York, 

562. 

Women,  noble  and  saintly,  in  the  Dark 
Ages,  139  </  seq,;  possessed  grcatt 
power  for  the  Church,  148,  151. 

World,  end  of  the,  expected,  58,  72, 

73- 
Worship,  scandalous  iiregnhuities  in, 

54- 
Wyclzff,  264. 


York,  the  election  of  the  Ardifaiafaop  of, 
Bernard's  intenr«ntion  in,  562  ti  mfm 

ZsNGHD,  Emir  of  Mosul,  552. 
Ziska,  the  HttssiCe,  511. 


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MAY    1  1    1928